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HAND-BOOK 



OF 



PROGRESSIVE PHILOSOPHY 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.6rg/details/handbookofprogre00schi 



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HAND-BOOK 



OF 



PROGRESSIVE PHILOSOPHY 



BY 

EDWARD SCHILLER 









NEW YORK 
J. S. REDFIELD, PUBLISHER 

140 FULTON STREET 

1871 



^ 
*> 






2> 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1S71, by 

EDWARD SCHILLER, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 



Edwaro O. Jenkins, 

rRINTER AND STEREOTYPER, 

20 North William Street, N. Y. 



TO HIS FRIEND, 

Wiley Bf^itton, Esq_., 

THIS VOLUME 

IS 

RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED 

BY THE 

AUTHOR. 



L'ENVOI. 

The book I herewith offer to the public is intended 
rather as a handbook for the general reader, than for 
the use of the philosophical student. Its statements 
might have been more fully supported by many in- 
teresting incidents and illustrations, but these would 
scarcely have been of sufficient importance to war- 
rant the additional expense of a much enlarged vol- 
ume, increasing its cost to the publisher, and conse- 
quently to the public. 

Living remote from the great centres of thought, 
I have not recently had access to extensive libraries, 
and some of my quotations have been made from 
memory. In other matters I have relied on the 
statements in Cyclopaedias, and the treatises in such 
works are too brief to be of much use to an author. 
I have endeavored in all cases to avoid giving any 
doubtful authorities, but it is proper to say, that 
some of the notes from, which this book were written 
were made many years ago, and may have grown 
rusty with age. 

I cannot but believe that this little volume, with 

(vii) 



viii L' ENVOI 

all its imperfections, will supply a want to a great 
many readers who have neither the means to pro- 
cure, nor the time to study the productions of the 
great philosophers of modern times, but who may 
still wish to acquire a concise knowledge of the great 
science of philosophy, and in this belief it is now 
submitted to their consideration. 

The Author. 

Fort Scott, Kansas, 

March 18th, 1871. 



HAND-BOOK 



OF 



PROGRESSIVE PHILOSOPHY. 



INri I. 

CHAPTER I. 

As it is manifest to any observing mind that the 
difference between man and all other animals consists 
chiefly in his having a Soul, the possession of which 
enables him to think and reason, and renders him 
a subject of moral government, it well becomes a 
point of pertinent inquiry for the possessor of this 
soul, to consider its affinities and relations, in order 
to judge its true value and power. 

From the dawn of Philosophy has this inquiry 
been the favorite and chief topic of investigation 
with the disciples of this great science, and men in 
all climes, of all ages, and of all creeds, have each in 
their turn and their way endeavored to solve the 
problem thus presented, to their own satisfac- 
tion. There are men, for instance, who attribute 
to the soul divine powers, while others class it only 
as a superior sort of instinct ; some say that it is born 
and dies with man, Avhile the opposite side contends 
i (0 



2 WHAT IS THE SOUL? 

that this soul migrates from one body into an- 
other. Again, there are not a few who maintain 
that the soul is a part of God himself, and that it 
returns to Him at the cessation of life in the human 
body. In fine, the opinions which are entertained 
by men as to the soul, its origin, and its destiny, are 
so manifold and contradictory, as to make it impos- 
sible to harmonize humanity on this, so essential a 
part of itself. At present, forbearing to enter on a 
discussion of the merits of these different beliefs, I 
propose merely to elucidate this matter from a nat- 
ural point of view. 

A man who believes in one God, in an all-wise, 
all-seeing and all-directing Creator, cannot but be- 
lieve that the soul by which only he is enabled to 
divine the existence of this superior and incompre- 
hensible power above him, is the choicest gift of this 
beneficent Creator. The possession of this knowl- 
edge alone brings man nearer to God, and is the 
very source of science, since this knowledge creates a 
yearning or a desire for spiritual instruction or im- 
provement. Further, by the possession of the soul, 
man is raised above his fellow-creatures, and domin- 
ion is given him over them. The soul, in fact, is the 
grand, needful essence by which man is enabled to 
•live on earth. Without it, the human race would 
have been swept long ago from the face of this planet, 
and it is only by the possession of this soul, that man 
has been able to overcome and conquer the obstacles 
of Nature. The struggles of man and his triumphs 
are visible in every quarter of the world, and the nar- 
rative of these struggles and triumphs is what we 



THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE SOUL. 3 

call history. It is the one grand epic of all ages and 
of all times. 

The first attribute of the soul, no doubt, is thought ; 
the next we should say is love. These two, in their 
turn, generate fear and trust ; and from these latter 
spring the passions for good or evil, which constitute 
the character of man. The first question which nat- 
urally arises will be to inquire what constitutes the 
difference in men's thoughts, or what we commonly 
denominate their mental capacity. The question 
will be, " Why is it that since all men have a soul 
given to them, to enable them to think and to reason, 
that there should be a difference in the results of the 
working of the soul among men ? Can God," so the 
questioner will ask, " have been so partial as to en- 
dow a portion of mankind with superior gifts to those 
he has given to the rest ?" 

Apparently there is an injustice, but, if we study 
the causes, we shall see that the difference is owing 
solely to the influence of physical laws. The late 
Henry Thomas Buckle, in his Introduction to the 
History of Civilization in England, rightly maintains 
that, in the first place, climate, food and soil are the 
great influences on which is dependent the accumu- 
lation of wealth ; that wealth, in its turn, produces 
leisure, and that leisure produces knowledge. No 
barbarous people, he says, dependent on their labor 
for their daily bread, have ever had time to devote 
to the cultivation of their mental powers, and it was 
only when men were released from the necessity of 
toil, that arts and sciences began to flourish. We 
can even now see the truth of this observation. The 



4 UNIVERSAL EDUCATION 

farmer who breaks up the raw prairie in the Far 
West, may have as great mental powers as the law- 
yer who pleads in the courts, yet while the former is 
compelled to labor almost solely with his physical 
powers, in order to sustain life, the latter is enabled 
to exert and expand his mental faculties in a much 
greater degree. 

Now, in olden times, our primitive ancestors hav- 
ing no wealth, had no necessity for laws or law-suits. 
When wealth, however, began to accumulate, the 
necessity for laws arose, and at the same time society 
began to divide itself into upper and lower classes, 
into producers of wealth and possessors of wealth. 
Labor and capital became separate and distinct from 
each other. The upper classes, by the possession of 
wealth, became possessors of leisure and could ac- 
quire knowledge, while the lower classes were com- 
pelled to continue to work in order to sustain life. 
As a necessary consequence, the upper classes could, 
with more leisure, better food, and better dwellings, 
improve faster than their less fortunate fellow-men, 
and make greater progress in knowledge. But the 
inequality, in course of time, became so great, that 
the upper classes themselves began to dread the 
brute force of the lower ones, as displayed for in- 
stance in the great French Revolution. Hence arose 
the best remedy, namely, the adoption of Universal 
Education. The safety of society, it is now admitted, 
lies in Universal Education on the broadest possible 
basis, and to-day it has been made one of the chiel 
duties of Government to supply the means to all 
classes, for the development of the powers of the 



A NECESSITY. 5 

soul, in such a manner as will benefit the individual 
and the State to the fullest degree. For it has been 
shown that the more perfect the system of Education 
is, the more prosperous becomes the State, the more 
wealth is collected, the more knowledge is dissemi- 
nated, the fewer crimes are committed, and the more 
happiness is diffused. 



THE SOUL A SPIRIT. 



CHAPTER II. 

There is no doutft a great difficulty in describing 
the soul, and hence have also arisen all the strife and 
contest between the opposing philosophical schools, 
which will indeed be as endless as the world itself. 
But with these disputes the present work has nothing 
whatever to do. The soul, we will say, is godlike. 
It is a Spirit. We can neither see nor hear it, yet 
we can judge it by its works, and hence we can spec- 
ulate as to its character and functions. We surmise, 
for instance, that God has created the universe, but 
how it was created, when it was created, and for 
what purpose it was created, is more than mortal 
man can undertake to say. Our knowledge, even 
though expanding from day to day, is yet very lim- 
ited, and, with all our boasted progress, we may be 
said to be, in the knowledge of the universe, only at 
the threshold of the great school. 

The soul being a spirit is of course the opposite of 
what we denominate Nature, a term which is applied 
to the aggregate physical substances of the Earth. 
These things are visible, or at least can be felt by the 
aid of the senses. But the soul can, as we said be- 
fore, be only judged by its affinities and their work- 
ings. 

In illustrating this, let us commence at the dawn 



MEMORY AN ATTRIBUTE. y 

of life itself. The infant in the cradle has a soul, but 
it lies dormant. The bodily infirmities as yet throw 
a cloud over the mental faculties. But as the infant 
gains strength from day to day, the power of the 
soul begins to manifest itself; slowly at first, but 
surely ; and here again the question of climate, food 
and soil enters largely into the activity of the soul. 
A child well cared for will develop faster than one 
neglected, and the great mortality of children in 
large cities is principally owing to the great want of 
care, to poor food, to bad ventilation and the previous 
bad condition of the parents. In a short time the new 
citizen of the world begins to notice the surrounding 
objects, especially those of a bright color and of a 
movable nature. Who has not noticed, for instance, 
the special attention which young children bestow 
on fire ? 

Day by day their powers of observation increase, 
and long before the faculty of speaking is developed, 
their memory has already commenced to exercise its 
functions. Memory we may safely assert to be the 
result of observation. It is by the powers of hearing, 
seeing and feeling that it is fed. Therefore it is just 
to say, that when our memory recollects anything, it 
results from our having observed it through the aid 
of these powers, which, in consequence, are the phys- 
ical connecting links between body and soul. With- 
out their aid, memory could not exist, but memory 
itself must be regarded as a part of the soul, or one 
of its attributes. It is defined by Dr. Webster as the 
" faculty of the mind by which it retains the knowl- 
edge of past events or ideas which are past." This 



8 MEMORY CHANGEABLE. 

is perhaps a somewhat faulty definition, since it can 
not be properly said of an idea which is really past, 
especially when the word is used in the place of con- 
ception or opinion, which may be fixed and perma- 
nent, and, therefore, always present. 

But memory itself undergoes vast changes, and 
these changes are the result of the varying condition 
of man. It grows more rapidly, or, more properly 
speaking, it expands faster than the growth of the 
body. It is perhaps in its fullest vigor in the third 
decade of life, but after that time it begins to fail and 
decline. In order to attain the full expansion of 
Memory, discipline and corresponding exercise are 
as much needed as they are to foster the growth of 
the body, and it is part of the system of education to 
develop this great attribute of the soul. However, 
a child's memory should not be Overburdened, as 
is too often the case, because its too rapid growth is 
not corresponding with the slower growth of the 
physical powers. Such undue exercise of memory 
is almost invariably followed by an undue expansion 
of the brain, out of proportion to the other corporeal 
parts. After the third decade in life is passed, mem- 
ory, as I said before, begins to decline, till it ends, in 
Shakespeare's words : 

" In second childhood and mere oblivion." 

There are some who retain a wonderful share of 
their memory even in old age, but there are many 
others who impair it even before they are old, mostly 
by sensual pleasures and excesses in life. Let it not 
be imagined, however, that intemperance, or a too 



VALUE OF MEMORY. g 

frequent indulgence of sexual intercourse are alone 
here embraced. They are, it is true, some of the 
main causes of the premature weakening of memory, 
but any over-exertion of either the powers of the 
soul or the body, when long continued, will bring on 
the loss of this attribute. For instance, gluttony, 
which overloads the stomach, and by this means 
compels the powers of the mind to lie dormant, ow- 
ing to the inability of its corporeal aids to do their 
required task. An unequal distribution of memory 
may also be remarked as being characteristic among 
all classes of society. This naturally arises from the 
diversity of occupation which men follow. The mer- 
chant chiefly remembers the commercial transactions 
he is engaged in ; the lawyer his briefs, and the sol- 
dier his campaigns. But there are thousands of 
other events and scenes they have witnessed which 
are often, if not totally, forgotten ; at least they are 
so vaguely impressed on their minds, that if ques- 
tioned in regard to them, they are but imperfectly 
recalled to their recollection. 

As to the value of memory, little needs to be said. 
Its necessity is apparent to us every day of our life. 
To some degree animals share memory with man, 
but it is chiefly confined to animal wants. Not so 
with thought. In its place, animals are merely gifted 
with an instinct. It has been asserted by some phi- 
losophers that instinct and thought are identical ; 
that animals think as well as man, and the sagacity 
of dogs, of bees, of elephants and of other brutes has 
been put forth as evidence to support the assertion. 
But I think this hypothesis cannot be established by 



10 THOUGHT, THE PILOT OF THE SOUL. 

evidence. An instinct, I take it, is a power at work 
almost simultaneous with birth ; necessary in order 
to allow its possessors to provide themselves with 
means of subsistence. This instinct man shares with 
animals, but it cannot be called thought, or assimi- 
lated to it. If the bees, for instance, had the power 
of thought, would they not build their hives in inac- 
cessible places, where men could not get their stores 
of honey ? Thought is a plant of slow growth, while 
instinct, as I have just observed, is almost fully de- 
veloped at birth. Thought is not fully developed for 
years. It grows slower than memory, but it also re- 
mains longer. Children of tender years do not think, 
though they observe, notice and recollect objects 
and events. They are censured and excused for 
awkward or ill-mannered expressions and actions, 
because they are known to be thoughtless. But day 
by day thought develops itself more fully, and it is 
only when this capacity for thought is supposed to 
be sufficiently developed, that society or the State 
will allow us to become emancipated from the con- 
trol of parents and guardians, and give us the direc- 
tion of our own affairs. 

Thought may not inaptly be. called the mainspring 
of the soul, or, perhaps more correctly, its pilot, for 
it not only sets the other powers of the soul to work, 
but it also guides them in whatever path it may 
choose to exercise its functions. Here again the dif- 
ferent systems of philosophy vary from each other. 
For while the predestinarian believes all events to 
be foreordained, the advocate of free-agency in man 
makes it dependent on thought, whether good or 



PREDESTINATION. II 

evil will result from its action. Without going at 
length into an investigation of the merits of this 
theory of predestination, I am nevertheless compel- 
led to observe, that however solacing such a belief 
may be, not only to criminals but even to honest 
men, this theory reduces man merely to a machine, 
an automaton, which does such and such acts, be- 
cause it is forced to do them, because this machine 
was foreordained to do it. . Such a belief degrades 
man to a level with the inferior animals. It takes 
away the value we set on thought, and excuses any 
action, however bad, on the plea of infallible neces- 
sity. But, in reality, these actions for which Predes- 
tination stands forth as the apologist, are the result 
of nothing but inclination, which Webster defines as 
a leaning of the mind or will, or a disposition more 
favorable to one thing than another. We are de- 
ceived into believing that the direction thought has 
given to our actions is not of our own doing, but of 
a marked-out plan of the Almighty. Thought has 
been often compared to the latent power which is 
developed by the passions. In using the word pas- 
sion, however, in this instance, it is only meant to 
denote a susceptibility of impression from extraneous 
causes. 



12 LOVE. 



CHAPTER III. 

I now come to speak of Love. Some of the an- 
cient philosophers gave it the first place among the 
attributes of the soul, but I have preferred, import- 
ant an element though it be in man's composition, to 
place it after Thought. Its two great subdivisions 
are, love sensual and love intellectual or spiritual. 
The former I have named first, simply because it is 
the first to develop itself. Our senses generate it, 
and therefore it does not properly belong here, 
where we simply treat of the soul as distinguished 
from instinctive feelings. Intellectual love itself, 
must be divided into love divine and love human. 
Love divine we feel toward the Creator. It is gene- 
rated by the contemplation of his works. Whoever 
looks up at the stars, the thousands of worlds by 
which this earth is surrounded, must be impressed 
with love divine toward the Creator of this im- 
mense universe. But this love is also mingled with 
awe, suspense and admiration. On contemplating his 
works, even in experiencing this love, Ave are at the 
same time impressed with the grandeur, with the 
majesty of God. Well indeed has one of the poets* 
of our day expressed himself when he says : 

* W. C. Bryant. Forest Hymn. 



LOVE OF THE G BE AT OB. 13 

f< The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned 
To hew the shaft and lay the architrave, 
And spread the roof above them — ere he framed 
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back 
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood. 
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down, 
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks 
And supplication. For his simple heart 
Might not resist the sacred influences 
Which, from the stilly twilight of the place, 
And from the gray old trunks that high in heaven 
Mingled their mossy boughs, and from the sound 
Of the invisible breath that swayed at once 
All their green tops, stole over him, and bowed 
His spirit with the thought of boundless power 
And inaccessible majesty." 

This spirit of the " thought of boundless power 
and inaccessible majesty " generated our admiration 
and produced love. It is by the contemplation of 
Nature that the greatest and purest teachers of man- 
kind first learned to reverence and to love the Crea- 
tor. Hereby they were first led to ponder on man's 
own condition, on his superiority over the other 
creatures surrounding him, and on his nearness to 
the Creator himself through the possession of his 
godlike soul. Offerings, sacrifices, prayers, and 
shrines then began to attest this reverence and love 
of man for the incomprehensible power which he 
felt above him, and which he, by exercise of thought, 
learned that it protected and loved him. That the 
nations of the earliest historical times should have 
adopted polytheism instead of a belief in one God, 



14 



TEE FACULTY OF REASON. 



does not enter here in our remarks, except in order 
to show that the love divine these nations felt was 
expressed to many imaginary gods instead of to the 
one all-controlling Spirit. Their love divine was 
not expressed so strongly and so markedly as our 
own, because of the, as yet, low standard of knowl- 
edge and science in their midst. But as man ad- 
vanced in civilization, as investigation progressed, 
as the laws of Nature began to be unfolded to his 
eye, this love divine became stronger, purer, and 
truer. It will thus be seen that knowledge is essen- 
tial for the appreciation and love of the Creator. It 
requires a reflecting mind to bring us truly into 
communion with God, since it is not through a mere 
instinct but through a development of the attributes of 
the soul with which we are endowed, that we study 
and learn the laws of Nature, and comprehend, par- 
tially at least, the Creator's designs. And when we 
learn this, we are also simultaneously imbued with 
love divine. But this love divine also imposes on us 
duties and responsibilities. The first is, — and it is 
the chief duty of man— to make himself in his con- 
duct, in his manner of life, as near the Great Model 
as it is possible for mortal man to be. 

To accomplish this, it is required of man to follow 
the Truth. Man is endowed with reason, the facul- 
ty by which he distinguishes truth from error and 
good from evil, or, more correctly speaking, right 
from wrong. It is a faculty which we exercise daily 
and hourly, and which, indeed, is the fundamental 
principle of all human laws; since no law could be 
enacted and executed except for the avowed pur- 



OBDEB. I i 

pOvSe of making a distinction between right and 
wrong. True, there may be laws which are wrong 
and unjust, but this does not invalidate the argu- 
ment in this case. All human laws claim to eman- 
ate from reason, and since reason is the faculty of 
knowing good from evil, no law-maker will stultify 
himself so greatly as to declare that his law is con- 
trary to reason, and that it is designed to foster the 
wrong instead of the right. But the Creator's laws, 
all men are agreed, are infallible. To them all men 
must bow, or else lose that love divine which we 
ought to entertain. These laws are self-executing, 
and their neglect brings corresponding punishment. 
Their violation is in antagonism with, and contrary 
to, Order. 

Order, like Truth, is one of the fundamental prin- 
ciples of the laws of the Creator. Hence it is that 
the astronomer can calculate with almost hair- 
breadth exactitude, the movements of our own as 
well as of the surrounding worlds. All nature is a 
great example of Order. The seasons change in or- 
der, day and night follow in order, the clouds and 
the rains, the tempests and the calms all alike move 
in order. Without order, indeed, this whole Uni- 
verse would be doomed to destruction. Planets and 
suns, comets and moons, were they to move out of 
their order would destroy each other. Were the 
changes of the seasons not to come in order, were 
day and night not to alternate in turn, nothing would 
live on earth. But this order is also closely connect- 
ed with progress. The changes of the earth are 
progressive as well as in order. The geologist di- 



l6 LOVE HUMAN. 

vides the strata of the earth into periods, showing the 
progress of their formation as distinct as if they had 
been recorded on the historic page. It will thus be 
seen how really essential is a cultivation of science, 
not alone in the contemplation of Nature, but for the 
higher purpose of an acquisition of the love divine. 
When we are therefore asked what the laws of the 
Creator teach us, our reply should be, " Wisdom, 
the right use or exercise of knowledge, the choice 
of laudable ends and the best means to accomplish 
them." We should also say, " They teach us pru- 
dence, which is the exercise of sound judgment in 
avoiding evils. We should say they teach us piety 
and veneration for the Creator. We should finally 
say, they teach us pity, benevolence and sympathy, 
which three qualities, combined with piety, are the 
mainsprings of human love. 

The love human, the offspring of the teachings of 
the love divine, is exercised in our relations and 
transactions with our fellow-men. Our parents, our 
children, our relatives and friends, are the first ob- 
jects of this love, and it is extended to a greater or 
less degree towards all men. " Love thy neighbour 
as thyself," is a saying as old as man himself, and no 
truly good man will allow himself to disregard it. 
It is to be found in all religious creeds and is taught 
by all schools. That it is too often disregarded, is 
owing to selfishness in the violators of this law. To 
guard against violations of this great law, society 
has enacted laws and instituted courts of justice. 
These tribunals are of high antiquity, dating from 
the time when nations were formed, or rather, when 



TEE PASSIONS. 17 

man began to accumulate wealth. For a thorough 
and concise exposition of the institution of human 
tribunals the reader is referred to the chapter on the 
Rights of Property in Blackstone's Commentaries. 

Though not strictly belonging here, we must ad- 
vert to a topic often discussed and yet undecided, 
namely, whether man is naturally depraved or natu- 
rally good. This Natural Depravity theory has 
found many supporters, but with my conception of 
the Deity, I cannot subscribe to it. I cannot ima- 
gine or think for a minute, that the benevolent Crea- 
tor chose to put on earth monsters of iniquity, who 
would prey on one another, and who only could be 
made good and virtuous by motives of self-interest. 
Besides, such a theory is degrading to the charac- 
ter of man himself, and love for each other only pos- 
sible when it is advantageous for man's interest. 
Under the supposition, on the contrary, that this 
love human is born with man, that man is naturally 
good, we have no difficulty to account for the origin 
of Nations. Man was drawn to man, not alone to 
benefit himself, but also each other. When men 
commit bad acts, they are not because of a natural 
depravity in men, but owing to extraneous causes 
which influence our passions. These passions are 
of an opposite nature. For instance : 

Joy, Terror, 

Pleasure, Grief, 

Disinterestedness, Covetousness, 

Love, Hatred, 

Pity, Envy, 

Diligence, Indolence, 



1 8 INFLUENCE OF THE PASSIONS. 

Benevolence, Avarice, 

Truth, Falsehood, 

Gravity, Levity, 

and so on. All these various causes enter into the 
exercise or repression of the love human. They 
shape our actions for good or evil, and, therefore, 
have not been inaptly styled the controllers of the 
soul. When our passions are exercised in a direction 
for good, we experience that sensation which is call- 
ed happiness. When otherwise, we become unhap- 
py, and even though not punished by human laws, 
we are experiencing mental pain or punishment. 



EVIDENCES OF DESIGN. 19 



CHAPTER IV. 

When we produce an article of industry we know 
that we design it for a specific purpose ; a pair of 
shoes, for instance, to cover our feet, or a house to 
dwell in. Now since the Creator gave us a soul, the 
question arises, What was this soul made for, and 
why was it given to man ? Certainly, the answer 
will be, that the Creator had an object in view in thus 
endowing us with so precious a spirit, which raises 
us high above the surrounding creations of the earth, 
and which gives us the power to subdue to our will 
and pleasure whatever there is of earth. If we have 
a work of magnitude to perform, if a road is to be 
made, if a steamship is to be built, if a canal is to be 
dug, we employ a number of workmen. Over these 
we place overseers, who are supposed to be experi- 
enced men, and who understand how to direct the 
movements of our workmen ; now, if we make this 
comparison, we are perhaps justified in saying, that 
we have a soul given to us to fit us for the work of 
overseers, or stewards. But a mature consideration 
of the subject will show us, that God has no need of 
man's stewardship, since the acorn will shoot up into 
the oak, without our help, and the beasts will go 
forth and multiply, without our supervision. Be- 
sides, the works of man are wrought solely for his 



20 WHAT IS THE SOULS MISSION? 

own needs, comforts and pleasures, and they would 
be faithless stewards indeed who labor only for their 
own behalf, and return nought to their employer. 

It is indeed impossible for the limited powers of 
our mind to fathom the designs of the Creator, but 
how often, nevertheless, does our soul ask itself the 
purpose of its mission ? Those who deny the exist- 
ence of a future state of the soul, — its immortality- 
attribute, of course, its powers only to our peculiar 
formation. They affirm that the soul is born and 
dies with man, and that it has no other mission save 
the one which it fulfills while the spark of life is in 
the body. But, would not man be the most misera- 
ble of all creatures on earth, were such really the 
case ? Says one of the most eminent philosophers 
and purest of men,* " If the soul was mortal as well 
as the body, if we had to die in soul as well as in body, 
man must certainly be the most unfortunate of beings 
on earth ; it would be really horrible to think that 
we should have only been put on earth to die, like a 
common herd of cattle, and such an idea would at- 
tribute to the all-good and all-mighty Creator of the 
universe (as I believe him to be) delight and pleasure 
in cruelty, inasmuch as he would have endowed us 
with reason for the sole purpose of embittering our 
life on earth, when reflecting how speedily it must 
terminate, and soul as well as body with it. The 
worst of men could speedily emancipate and release 
themselves from the divine control, and a poniard 
might easily effect the separation between the Crea- 
tor and man. The wisest and best of men, the foun- 
* Moses Mendelssohn. 



BELIEF IN A FUTURE STATE UNIVERSAL. 2 \ 

ders of all our social institutions, humanity itself, 
would all have cheated, not alone others, but them- 
selves." 

Those who believe that the soul's stay on earth is 
its preparatory school for a mission hereafter, adopt, 
according to my view, the most plausible and tena- 
ble supposition. In fact it is an inward feeling-, the 
consciousness of which all men experience ; it is to 
be found in the religious history of every nation, 
whether of ancient or of modern times. The Ely- 
sium and the Tartarus of the Greeks, the happy 
hunting-grounds of the North American Indians, the 
Suttees of Hindostan, all alike point to this belief in 
a hereafter. The Divina Commedia of Dante, the great- 
est literary work of the Middle Ages, treats entirely 
of an imaginary after-world, filled almost entirely, 
however, with friends and foes of the poet, whose 
political sins are punished and atoned for, or their 
political virtues rewarded. The Descent of Ulysses 
into Hades, as narrated by Homer, is another illus- 
tration of the antiquity of this belief, and as I have 
said before, we find traces of it in the history of every 
nation. 

However imperfect and crude this belief may have 
been among the ancients, it is important for us to 
know that it had an existence among them, and that, 
as knowledge and science advanced, it became holier, 
purer and more sublime. Even among the Pagans 
there were philosophers like Socrates, Plato, Aris- 
totle and others who speculated on the immortality 
of the soul and its mission, but unfortunately their 
schools were almost inaccessible to the lower classes 



22 AN AGE OF PROGRESS. 

of society, nor were those classes, even by their train- 
ing and education, properly fitted to appreciate the 
teachings of these masters. The philosophical schools 
of the ancients, though they have done immense 
service, were, however, only like hot-house plants, 
and the common people derived but little benefit 
from them. As a consequence, when the Roman 
Empire fell, the schools of the philosophers fell with 
it, since to give vitality to institutions or creeds, the 
support of the masses of the people is needed, and 
these masses being but imperfectly, or not at all in- 
structed in philosophy, could not be expected to re- 
tain or propagate doctrines which they either only 
knew partially, or of which they were totally igno- 
rant. The numberless wars and feuds of the Middle 
Ages, the yoke of the Church which rested upon the 
masses, and the almost total neglect of the culture of 
letters averted the cause of mental inquiry, and the 
seeds planted by the early philosophers were long 
lying dormant in the ground. 

But as the day succeeds the night, and as the calm 
follows the storm, so the dense barbarism of the Mid- 
dle Ages had to give way to an age of progress. 
With the invention of the art of printing, man started, 
as it were, on a new era of existence. The means of 
indefinitely communicating ideas to the contempora- 
neous world, as well as to posterity, were thereby 
firmly secured, and retrograde movements in science 
rendered impossible. Philosophy, since that day, re- 
ceived a wonderful impulse, and to enumerate the 
writers alone on that branch of study, would require 
a stupendous catalogue. Much, very much has been 



EARTHLY EXISTENCE PREPARATORY. 



23 



written on philosophy, and its systems have multi- 
plied, but is the subject exhausted ? Has any one 
writer completely solved the problem we are speak- 
ing of — this mission of the soul? We must answer, 
No. Though a great deal of good has been accom- 
plished, yet the difference of the theories of the vari- 
ous systems of philosophy are so conflicting, and 
often so irreconcilable, that to look for unity among 
philosophers themselves, would be an idle waste of 
time, either at present or hereafter. But undoubt- 
edly, as I said, the labors of these men have been 
productive of good, because, even if they have not 
been able to elucidate the whole of the truth, they 
have to a great degree succeeded in bringing us 
nearer to it. Far be it from me to pretend that I 
may succeed better in this investigation than these 
learned, wise and illustrious men. On the contrary, 
profiting by their labors, I mean to give a concise 
statement of what has been accomplished in this field 
of science. 

I have already stated that I incline to the belief 
that the soul's stay on earth is merely a preparatory 
school for its greater usefulness and larger fields 
of action in its future existence ; and the following 
reasons seem to me to be the most cogent in support 
of this supposition. The Creator we have seen and 
daily see in our intercourse with Nature, puts noth- 
ing on earth without a certain purpose. Stones, 
plants, animals, have all been created for a definite 
object. Nothing is useless in this world, though, in 
more than one instance, we may not know what use 
to make of the materials which the Creator has 



24 



CAN A SOUL DIE? 



placed in our hands. To give an illustration we 
need but point to petroleum. How many centuries 
elapsed before man began to notice this now 
most essential article of domestic economy ? Its 
usefulness was not discovered till it was needed. It 
is need which puts men's minds at work to investi- 
gate the treasures with which they are surrounded 
and the use they can make of them. Accidental dis- 
coveries and inventions there are, of course, but their 
number in reality is very limited. 

The soul which the Creator has given us is a 
needful part in man's organization. It is, besides, 
the badge of superiority, and in reality the govern- 
ing power on earth, as far as human actions are con- 
cerned. Without it man's stay on earth would be 
impossible. When it leaves us, our bodies decay 
and wither like the flowers of the fields. The clay 
of our bodies mingles again with Mother Earth. 
But what becomes of our soul? Can a soul die? 
Can it utterly perish ? I think not. Like the drop 
of water which, when converted into steam, flies into 
the realms of air, joins itself to clouds and in rain- 
drops returns to the earth, may not our soul under- 
go a similar process ? May it not return to upper 
regions in company with other souls ? May it not 
even return to this planet, or wander further on to 
some one of those countless earths, which are dis- 
closed to our vision when the sun sets in the West 
and night throws her mantle over us ? It is not 
reasonable to suppose that the soul's mission is end- 
ed with the death of the body. Such a supposition 
would be in conflict with the laws of nature. Na- 



ITS MISSION NEVER ENDED. 2 $ 

ture, we know, reproduces herself. After regular 
intervals the flowers return to deck the fields, the 
blossoms re-appear on the trees, and the green grass 
re-covers the meadows. The fruits of the earth, af- 
ter nourishing us, return as fertilizers to the ground, 
and neither their oxygen nor hydrogen is lost. Yet 
these are inanimate, soulless creations. Why, then, 
should we suppose that this godlike soul can ever 
be lost? On the contrary, it would be safe to as- 
sume that its mission is never ended. There is work 
for it whether in our body or out of it. It is one of 
the ever-restless, unceasingly working agents of 
Nature, which, so soon as released from one field of 
labor, finds elsewhere another post for its usefulness. 
The all-wise Creator has, however, forbidden us to 
look further. The field of doubt and supposition alone 
is open to us. We may all speculate as to the here- 
after, but no one can tell whether we are right in 
any hypothesis we may build. Where is the man 
who is able to decide whether we doubt and sup- 
pose correctly or not? We ourselves may think 
that we are on the right path, but after all we may 
be in error. 

It is on this topic that the theological battle wages 
among all creeds and religions. Each has its theory, 
and each claims that theory to be the only correct 
one. Yet there never has been a creed, and perhaps 
never will be one, which was recognized universally 
as the true one. Who can count the different 
theories which have prevailed among men during 
historic times ? How much of error and fable has 
not been incorporated with a few grains of truth ? 

2 



26 THE FUTURE A MYSTERY. 

Generations have lived and nations have passed 
away, one after the other, like the seasons of the 
year, and still the same mystery and doubts are not 
cleared up. Our learning has increased, our wealth 
has multiplied, our earthly institutions have pros- 
pered, but our knowledge of the hereafter has not 
progressed an iota in the many centuries which have 
passed. 



TBANSMIGRA TION. 



27 



CHAPTER V. 

In speaking in the preceding pages of a possibility 
of the soul's returning to earth, we ought to have 
added that though possible, it is not probable. Those 
who believe in transmigration do so on the hypothe- 
sis that our soul, though powerful, cannot act with- 
out the aid of the body, and that its powers are la- 
tent till it again combines with either a similar or a 
different substance through which it can act. Now, 
were our soul to enter the body of an animal, as is 
the Buddhist belief, would not this animal on becom- 
ing endowed with this human soul become as ration- 
al as man ? Again, we cannot assume that our soul 
can re-enter a human body, unless we also assume 
the preposterous idea that we have forgotten all we 
knew in a previous existence in the body on earth, and 
are forced to commence our work anew. This doc- 
trine of transmigration of spirits on earth, brings us 
no nearer than we are to the Creator, nor do we be- 
come any more useful. The desire which every hu- 
man being feels, or ought to feel, within him, to fit 
himself for a world hereafter, would be useless, since 
we could only regard ourselves as prisoners bound 
to the earth. Were such to be the case, should we 
not be justified in accusing the Creator of cruelty in 



28 THE HUMAN RACE IN ITS INFANCY, 

implanting this longing for the hereafter in our 
breasts, while at the same time he is condemning us 
to everlasting peregrinations on earth ? 

But I will say this much as a conviction which 
has grown up within me, and which has been in- 
creased and strengthened by long reflection, namely, 
that it is safe to assume, that notwithstanding its long 
existence on earth, the human race is as yet in its 
infancy ; that noth withstanding its great progress in 
learning and comprehending the laws of physical 
nature, we have not yet mastered even these, and 
only when we shall know them more fully, will it be 
possible for us to know those higher laws regarding 
our soul and regarding the hereafter. Each day, 
each month, each year, it is true, witnesses some 
progress, and we are to-day far better able to judge 
of these things than our forefathers were, but our 
knowledge is confined mostly to earthly and not to 
spiritual matters. Still we must make even more 
progress in these if we wish to solve the mystery. 
For instance, the immense distance which separates 
us from the other heavenly bodies, has precluded us 
from learning much about them, except as to the 
order of their movements, their probable magnitude, 
and their influence upon each other. But does this 
satisfy us ? Do we not wish to know, for instance, 
whether they are inhabited, and what these inhabit- 
ants are like ? Do we not wish to know of their 
oceans, of their rivers, of their mountains ? Of all 
this we know nothing, and until science advances 
further, until she advances far enough to bring us, 
the inhabitants of the earth, in communication with 



ALWAYS PROGRESSING. 29 

the inhabitants of the other stars, we cannot even 
hope to judge correctly of the world hereafter, sim- 
ply because we do not know the world we now live 
in. 



30 



A CCO TINT ABILITY. 



CHAPTER VI. 

Considering that we possess reasoning- powers, 
that we know good from evil, and that we also know 
that it is wrong for us to do the latter for momentary 
advantage, or any other motive, in preference to the 
former, it may well be supposed that our soul should 
be held accountable. Yet how far ? I have already 
stated that a violation of the laws of Nature — its 
physical laws — brings its own punishment. Then 
there are human laws which punish transgressions 
against society, but the soul is held amenable to a 
higher law, about which we know as little as we 
know of our hereafter. The chief question in my 
mind is, whether our accountability ceases with our 
stay on earth ? The theological schools have in 
most instances, held that judgment is to be passed on 
our soul after the death of the body. Some make 
this judgment take place immediately, while others 
have solemnly described the advent of the great, 
dreadful, final day, when the almighty shall sit in 
judgment on all men, when the righteous shall be 
rewarded, and the wicked shall be punished. To 
me it looks rather absurd, if not laughable to ima- 
gine that the souls of the millions of men who have 
lived and died before us and will live and die after 
us, are to be assembled altogether to await trial and 



THE BAY OF JUDGMENT. 31 

judgment. Just think what an enormous work this 
would be, to pass judgment on all these souls, who 
are to stand before the justest of judges, and who 
will have to give a fair trial to all. Then as to the 
punishment. A soul being a spirit, how is it to be 
punished ? Again, some men have not lived as 
wickedly as others. Some have been good men, 
and others far better. How long a time would have 
to elapse for the finishing up of this interminable 
docket? This day of judgment would be almost a 
matter of infinity. Then, if God, on the other hand, 
judges us immediately after death, and we know 
that a man dies every second on earth, must not his 
time necessarily be occupied with acting as judge? 

This matter, with my limited comprehension, 
looks to me almost as impossible to fathom as an at- 
tempt to count the stars in the firmament. I will 
not, therefore, speculate even on the probable de- 
crees of this mythical judgment-day, for if we do not 
know of the future condition of our soul, except that 
of its immortality, we cannot parcel out imaginary 
places of punishment, or attempt to set apart places 
in heaven or in hell, as is too often even now-a-days 
done. 



32 



SENSIBILITY OF THE SOUL, 



CHAPTER VII. 

There is a kind of feeling in men which, in place 
of a better word, I have to designate as the " sensi- 
bility " of the soul. In using this word, I mean to 
convey to the reader, the susceptibility of the 
soul to perceive, not as the word is commonly 
used, external objects, but rather internal ideas. It 
is one of the most remarkable facts in the history of 
the human race, that every reasonable being seems 
to be attracted toward a future state of existence by 
an innate yearning. Toward the past our soul seems 
to be indifferent. We do not meet with the inquiry 
" Where does our soul come from ?" half as often as 
the question " Where does our soul go to ?" A long- 
ing and yet a dread of the hereafter ; a desire to lift 
the veil of futurity ; a wish to catch a glimpse of 
eternity, are alike visible in the records of ancient as 
well as of modern nations. The oldest epic of Hel- 
las, the Odyssey of Homer, gives us a prolix account 
of the popular belief prevailing among the Greeks in 
regard to the abiding-place of departed souls. The 
pictures given us by the blind bard of Smyrna have 
been interwoven so successfully with the history of 
literature, that they are even to this day as well 
known to us as they were when minstrels recited them 
at the Olympian Festivals. Then comes the Divina 



PLEASURE AND GRIEF. 



33 



Commedia of Dante, to which we have alluded ere this. 
Paradise Lost and the Messiah by Klopstock, are the 
most noteworthy of the literary productions of this 
class, of latter days. But the skepticism and the 
bolder range of investigation in philosophy, as we 
shall see hereafter, have made the production of a 
poem of this character almost an imposssibility in 
in our own age. 

The sensibility of the soul is chiefly affected, if not 
directed, by Truth. Truth is born with us. How 
do we ever lose it? Simply by contact with the 
world. Children will naturally speak the truth, and 
it is a powerful argument for the theory, that man 
does not owe the possession of virtue to society, that 
the love of truth is innate in our breasts. The lover 
of truth is a lover of virtue. No villain loves truth, 
and only speaks truth when truth will further his 
object and the accomplishment of his desires. The 
aim of all science, in whatever branch, is the discov- 
ery of truth. Side by side with truth is virtue, but 
virtue cannot exist without truth. Falsehood and 
vice naturally are the two opposite sensibilities. 
From the exercise of these spring the passions, which 
I have already partly enumerated, but now propose 
to speak of more fully. 

Pleasure and grief are two opposite expressions of 
the sensibility of the soul. Delightful and painful 
sensations are mixed and intermingled in the life of 
every human being. No mortal, however unfortu- 
nate he may deem himself to be, is without his due 
share of pleasure, while on the other hand, even the 
most fortunate has his modicum of grief, for an over- 

2' 



»* 



34 



LAUGHING AND CRYING. 



plus of pleasure would be death even to the most for- 
tunate. Shakespeare gives a most admirable illus- 
tration of a case where grief and sorrow are almost 
overwhelming till relieved by pleasure. I refer to 
his King Lear. There he pictures the old blind sov- 
ereign as deserted and forsaken by his courtiers, his 
subjects and even by his favorite daughter. He is 
left alone in a forest, a tempest is raging in all its 
fury ; the very elements seem to have combined with 
his enemies to fill the king's cup of misery ; he is 
ready to die, when Cordelia appears, and brings relief 
by infusing pleasure. An opposite illustration is the 
incident in the life of David, the King of Israel. He 
has just successfully quenched a dangerous rebellion, 
and his kingdom is restored to him intact, but the 
pleasure of the achievement is saddened by the mis- 
erable death of his son Absalom. 

An agreeable sensation has not inaptly been de- 
fined as a perception of perfection, while sorrow or 
grief mark the sensation of the imperfection. An 
alternate experience of both is as necessary to man 
as the change of seasons is to Nature, for a surfeit of 
either would make life insupportable. This is too 
well known a fact to need further illustration. I 
must, however, here revert to the symptoms by 
which we commonly show pleasure or grief, namely, 
laughing and crying. Though the former generally 
denotes pleasure, and the latter grief, yet both may 
be produced by either of these passions. Thus we 
hear of people crying with pleasure, or of scornful 
laughter, but in these cases it is the intensity of our 
feelings which produces the opposite symptoms. 



COURAGE AND FEAR. 



35 



Pity we may rank as the next passion by which the 
sensibility of the soul is exercised. It is commonly 
described as a mixed sensation, produced from the 
love we bear a certain object, and the misfortune 
we see it suffer. A very natural though opposite 
passion is Ajiger toward the cause to which we as- 
cribe the wrongful act which has excited our pity. 
Hatred is the stronger degree of anger, and is almost 
invariably attended with a wrongful love for those 
causes which contribute to the detriment of the ob- 
ject we dislike. This criminal love, so totally different 
from pure love, is intensified or lessened by the cor- 
responding strength which our soul receives. We 
may hate some men, for instance, more than others, 
because our soul is more strongly impressed with 
what we conceive to be their imperfections. Misan- 
thropy is perhaps the strongest form or degree of 
hatred, since we feel it not for a few individuals, but 
all our fellow-men. It is a curious but perfectly nat- 
ural result, that good men will oftener become mis- 
anthropic than depraved ; the reason therefor being, 
that the shock of deceit or fraud practiced on them 
is felt so much more acutely by their souls ; and love 
is converted thereby into hatred. 

Courage and fear may also here be noticed as the 
workings of the sensibilities of the soul. Courage, 
however, as well as fear, is not confined to mere phys- 
ical causes, but, on the contrary, to mental ones, and 
a man indeed who may be physically courageous, 
because he is strong, may be a moral coward, because, 
for instance, he is fearful of the evil consequences any 
of his acts may have upon himself. 



36 THE POWER OF TEE SOUL. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

. I am now to treat of the powers of the soul, and 
of the means requisite to make them useful. Like 
the rough block of marble lying unused in the quarry, 
till human hands raise it up to the surface of the 
earth and fashion and mould it, our soul is dormant, 
its powers are undeveloped till other hands come to 
our aid ; and this help is the mutual influence which 
one member of society exerts over the others. As 
we shall see hereafter, it depends on the degree of 
what we call civilization, to retard or advance the 
activity of the powers of the soul. But of this, more 
hereafter. Unlike the other animals, man has a long 
term of infancy. He is 

" Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms," 

as Shakespeare says, the most. helpless creature which 
sees the light of day. Nothing, perhaps, shows clearer 
the will of Providence that men should live together, 
should help each other, and should love each other, 
than this utter helplessness and dependence on our 
fellow-men for so long a time. This dependence has 
brought forth the institutions of families, of tribes, 
and of nations. The bodily infirmities of the infant 
scarcely would suggest the possession of the soul, if 



THE ACTION OF TEE SOUL. 37 

we did not know it from the previous history of man- 
kind. Slowly and tediously pass the days of the 
dawning- of intellect in man, and were it not for pa- 
rental care and solicitude implanted in us in a far 
superior degree than in animals, the body would 
succumb and perish ere the soul could begin to start 
on its earthly mission. 

The first effort of the soul in its infancy consists in 
the endeavor to retain the impressions it receives. 
Watch the one-year old child holding out its arms to 
parent or nurse. It has already received and re- 
tained the impressions of their presence, and will 
lament by cries their absence. The beginning of 
speech is the beginning of the reproduction of these 
impressions, received and retained, and may be called 
a positive evidence of the action of the soul, since it 
requires an effort of the mind to retain or, as we 
commonly say, remember the sounds of the words, 
and a further effort to reproduce the sounds thus 
retained or remembered. At first only single uncon- 
nected words are brought forth, and these the easi- 
est, simplest sounds. . They are what I should call 
the words of necessity, forced from the infant's lips 
by its wants, and as yet do not show clearly the ac- 
tion of the soul. 

This action is first clearly shown, long after speech 
has been acquired, by the questions children will 
ask. The retention of impressions received we know, 
then, is not the only object in their minds, but by 
becoming questioners, they become also reflectors, 
or reasoners. They inquire into causes in order to 
get at the truth. I have often been amused at the 



38 KNOWLEDGE. 

remark made by parents and others, " What a child 
this is to ask questions !" or, " Who put a thing like 
this in the child's head ?" The answer is, of course, 
simple enough. It is the power of the soul which 
begins to act in the child. It is at this stage very 
often that the child's intellectual growth is hindered 
and stunted by abrupt and unsatisfactory replies, or 
perhaps by receiving no answers whatever. Instead 
of judiciously fostering the intellectual development 
of the minds of these youthful questioners, we often 
repel and hinder this progress, simply because we 
do not care to be burdened with the task of explain- 
ing, even if we are able to, what the child desires 
to know. It is too much trouble — is our excuse 
— and a very poor excuse it is, it must be con- 
fessed. 

In order to qualify our children for future useful- 
ness, we have to imbue them with knowledge, which 
is the chief requisite for action. Knowledge is ac- 
counted more excellent than action, and the former 
can exist without the latter, though the latter is im- 
possible without the former. Knowledge has been 
defined by Locke as the clear and certain perception 
of that which exists, or of truth and fact ; the percep- 
tion of the connection and agreement or disagree- 
ment and repugnancy of our ideas. It will thus 
readily be seen that children cannot be fit for action 
until they are imbued with knowledge, and as the 
acquisition of knowledge is only gradual, step by 
step, the exertion for action should be correspond- 
ingly slow. No child should be overtasked with ac- 
tion or work. It is on this principle that we may 



ART. 



39 



compare the preceding generations to children, and 
because their knowledge was limited, the result 
was, that their intellectual labors were imperfect 
compared to those we perform. Again, knowledge 
is said to be acquired often by experience in contra- 
distinction from knowledge acquired by study, but 
the difference of its acquisition consists only in 
method, for in the former case we are taught the 
power of our own soul, while in the latter it is by the 
power of the souls of our fellow-men. Knowledge 
acquired by experience is often simultaneous with 
action, and may be described as the consciousness 
of any particular fact, deed, or idea often repeated, 
and thus impressed upon our minds. Knowledge 
produces Art. Art in the abstract has been defined 
as not only the knowledge of one particular, but of 
all similar to it, which go to make up an universal. 
Therefore Art is superior to Experience, though it is 
begotten by it. 

Though the senses constitute the principal means 
of knowledge of particulars, yet they do not show 
the causes and principles of these particulars, and 
the mere possession of these senses does not indicate 
the presence of the soul. It is what we call reason 
which directs the senses and enables the soul to 
enunciate Truth. According to Aristotle, reason 
has five qualities by which it does its work, either by 
affirmation or negation, and they are : Art, Prudence, 
Science, Wisdom and Intellect. 

i. Art. — I have already stated it to be the knowl- 
edge of not only one part, but of all similar to it 
which tend to make up an universal. Schlegel's def- 



40 SCIENCE, WISDOM, INTELLECT. 

inition of art is less expressive, yet worthy of notice. 
This philosopher defines art to be fancy become visi- 
ble, assuming a bodily shape, word or sound. Fancy 
here, of course, expresses the faculty by which the 
mind forms images or representations, but as this word 
is used to express so many other ideas, as for in- 
stance, taste, love, thought, false notion, etc., its use 
here is rather apt to mislead the reader without en- 
tering into long explanation. 

2. Science. — Regarding it, Schlegel's definition is 
more correct and expressive when he says that " in 
this beautiful world, according to its original accept- 
ation, science is not regarded as already finished and 
mature, but as an object of search, of a noble curiosity 
and of a pure enthusiasm for great a7id sublime truths, 
while at the same time it implies the wise use of 
such knowledge." According to Aristotle, " Science 
is everywhere property of that which is first, and 
from which other things are suspended, and through 
which they are predicated." 

3. Wisdom is the perception of the intellectual 
vision of causes and principles, not alone regarding 
mortal natures, but also eternal, immovable and in- 
telligible natures. Wisdom cannot be perfect in 
man on earth, as with his limited senses he- cannot 
clearly comprehend and grasp the designs of the 
'Creator. 

4. Intellect is that power of the soul by which we 
know the indemonstrable principles of demonstra- 
tion. For instance, we can demonstrate that the 
earth moves round the sun, but we cannot demon- 
strate the principle of this motion. 



PRUDENCE. 4I 

5. Prudence is the habit of acting in accordance 
with true reason in things which may result in good 
or evil. 



42 



ELECTRICITY. 



CHAPTER IX. 

There is one peculiarity which binds all created 
beings, animate as well as inanimate, heavenly as 
well as terrestrial, and this is their mobility. The 
boundless universe, the countless worlds, are inces- 
santly moving. Comets, planets, moons and suns 
are never stationary, and it is a question, indeed, 
whether anything really exists which may be said to 
be stationary and never changing. Stones even 
grow and decay, like plants and animals. The air, 
the water, the soil, all change. It may be asked, 
Why are all these changes ? What is the cause ? In 
some instances science has demonstrated the causes 
for this change in nature, but much more as yet re- 
mains a mystery. Of late years when the laws of 
electricity came to be studied and investigated, it 
has also been demonstrated that electricity pervades 
the whole earth. But as yet this branch of Science 
is in its infancy, and we must leave to future genera- 
tions the task of exploring this vast field. 

But the question has often occurred to me wheth- 
er there may not also be mental as well as physical 
electricity ? Is this mental electricity not identical 
with magnetism which we find occasionally develop- 
ed to an extraordinary degree in isolated cases ? Is 
there electricity, for instance, in the eye? Does not 



MENTAL ELECTRICITY. 



43 



our tongue by its power of speech act as a conduc- 
tor of electricity? Finally, is not speech itself a 
species of electricity? These are only hypotheses. 
But it has been assumed that magnetism is a part of 
human, nature, the difference being that some men 
have it more developed than others. It is those who 
are more magnetic than others who need not use 
speech, but simply the eyes to attract others to them. 
Speech, indeed, may be electricity itself, and it cer- 
tainly can be likened to the conductor of thought, or 
to the wire over which the electric spark passes 
from one soul into the other. If this be so, is not 
the soul itself the highest species of electricity ? But 
in order to make its magnetism available, it must 
have means, of attraction ; language, or speech, is 
one of the principal ones, and the more perfect lan- 
guage becomes, the more perfect a conductor of 
thought it is likely to prove. This is a fact not to be 
slightly overlooked, and may account in a large de- 
gree for the advancement of civilization, step by 
step, from the days when the languages of the differ- 
ent nations were in their infancy to the present 
time. 

May we not also say that when sleep overpowers 
us, our mental electricity is, for the time being, ex- 
hausted ? that our dreams are but ephemeral flashes 
of this electric essence, and that we only wake again 
when we have re-acquired a sufficient supply of this 
electricity to last us for another limited period ? Our 
bodily powers, of course, need repose, but does not 
the soul require it also, and even a greater degree 
of it? Is it not in constant action when we are 



44 IS REASON AN ELECTRIC FACULTY? 

awake, even in those men who possess the lowest 
grade of intellect? Here, indeed, may be found the 
imperfection of man compared to our estimate of the 
Divine Spirit. This latter is ever active, ever at 
work, while man's spirit, his soul, is required to 
rest. The active powers of the soul are not con- 
stantly in motion, while the Divine Spirit must work 
incessantly in order that Nature should move in sys- 
tematic order. A great deal more, no doubt, might 
be said on this subject, but I think I have shown 
that there may be some truth in this hypothesis of 
electricity ; that it is not at all improbable that elec- 
tricity enters into the organization of our system in 
a larger degree than we have been heretofore led to 
believe, and that, perhaps, it is the most important 
and necessary essence in man. 

From this line of argument, of course, the de- 
duction must be reached that our soul, though 
superior to anything on earth, is not perfect ; that 
man, even if made in God's image, is but an instru- 
ment in God's hand to do this or that thing, and as 
we have ere this stated, it is on this ground that be- 
lievers in predestination argue the correctness of 
their views. But we have already seen that this 
doctrine destroys all belief in the free-agency Of 
man, and is dangerous to the very existence of so- 
ciety, in which state, it is apparently the design of 
the Creator that man should live. If we were but 
mere instruments, what use would there be in our 
being possessed of reason ? Here, again, I have to 
ask the question, " Is reason an electric faculty ? Is 
it spontaneous or acquired by thought?" Reason, 



NECESSITY OF DOUBTING. 



45 



according to Sch-legel, is one of the four principal 
branches of human consciousness — understanding, 
will, and fancy being the other three. Now if con- 
sciousness is spontaneous, if it is innate in man, it is, if 
the soul be electrical, also electric, and thence it fol- 
lows that all its parts are electric. But I think, my- 
self, that reason is generated by thought, and it is 
well known that a man must think ere he begins to 
reason. Again, reason grows by cultivation, and is 
strongest in those men who are more given to thinking, 
to investigating, to doubting ; which latter is said to be 
the beginning of philosophical inquiry, since the an- 
cients had a maxim, that those who investigated with- 
out having previously doubted, resembled those 
who are ignorant whither to proceed, and did not 
know whether or not they had found the object of 
their search. This necessity of doubting, indeed, 
precedes all philosophical inquiry and research, and 
Hooker, one of the greatest English divines, lays it 
down as a maxim, " that even in matters divine, 
concerning some things we may lawfully doubt 
and suspend our judgment." This is certainly a 
broad basis, but it would be preferable to say that 
we may doubt in all things, in order to exercise 
our judgment and then by this means elucidate the 
truth. 



46 THE SOUL TRAINABLE. 



CHAPTER X. 

The question which is perhaps more engrossing 
than any other is, " Can the soul be perfected ?" that 
is, " Can it be made purer and more refined ?" It 
may at first look paradoxical to think that a spirit so 
near to God, if not part of God himself, should need 
schooling or training for its amelioration, but when 
we investigate the question fully and deeply, we 
must become convinced that like our body, our soul 
also stands in need of training. Of the existence of 
the soul outside of the body, of course we cannot 
undertake to speak, since we do not know how it ex- 
ists, or where it exists, but are simply impressed with 
the conviction that it exists in some shape or other 
even after death. Of the existence of the soul, how- 
ever, when it is animating and directing us, we have 
more positive evidence, and therefore a more legiti- 
mate field of inquiry. 

Take man throughout the globe, in civilized coun- 
tries, in semi-barbarism, or even in his savage state, 
and you will find that his soul is being trained. It 
is perfected according to the standard of perfection 
prevalent in the different localities in which he may 
reside. It is true that these standards differ, but all 
have a maximum and a minimum. The good and 
virtuous, in countries civilized or otherwise, are all 



CONSCIENCE. 47 

accounted everywhere to be of the highest grade, 
while vice and folly occupy, according to their de- 
gree, a correspondingly low station. The purer the 
soul is, and the more perfect our conduct, the high- 
er we rise, not alone in the estimation of our fellow- 
men, but what is perhaps more satisfactory to us, in 
our own self-respect. On the contrary, the vicious 
have no self-esteem, even when by assuming the 
cloak of hypocrisy, they manage to retain the es- 
teem of their fellow-men. A man who loses his self- 
esteem, or more correctly his respect for himself, has 
fallen indeed from his high position. Is he not to 
himself an object of contempt ? Conscious of his 
own infamy, he is degraded by being surrounded by 
superior excellence. Such contrasts are of them- 
selves a great incitement to virtue. Men do not like 
to be outdone. Every man has more or less ambi- 
tion, and it often needs only a few (sometimes only 
one) bright examples to rouse up a spirit of emula- 
tion, to awaken the sluggard and hasten the tardy. 

It is a common saying, but nevertheless a true one, 
that virtue brings its own reward. Our conscience 
is a good accountant. It weighs our actions as none 
of our fellow-men can weigh them, since it alone is 
conversant with our motives. When we have done 
wrong, it is not slow to tell us that there is a balance 
on the wrong side of its ledger ; but the feeling of 
satisfaction we experience when we have done a 
good act, is worth more to us than the thanks, 
either in word or deed, which may be rendered to 
us by other men. How natural, for instance, does it 
appear, even to decline receiving these acknowledg- 



48 CONSCIENCE A GUIDE. 

ments. But do we decline the thanks of our own 
conscience ? Our conscience is the most important 
guide of the soul. It is a true gauge, showing how 
high this soul has risen, or how low, perhaps, it may 
have fallen. Woe to the human being who heeds 
not its warning voice. Sooner or later this sturdy 
sentinel makes himself heard. Though temporarily 
silenced by the intensity of evil passions, it is never 
conquered, never subdued. Its voice may be hushed 
for a time, but persevering, untiring, and with reason 
at command, it sits in judgment on our deeds, and 
will accept no half-way apology, no extenuating cir- 
cumstances for the wrongs we have done. The pos- 
session of conscience is, perhaps, the sole reason that 
comparatively so few wrongs are committed by men. 
Though our criminal records fill thousands of vol- 
umes, surely we can safely say that they are a 
thousandfold outweighed by our righteous deeds, 
of which no record is kept. 

Thus it will be seen that conscience is a prevent- 
ive agent, but it is even more. It guides us to vir- 
tue and morality by means of ambition. We see a 
good man, and admiring his good acts, our own con- 
science will soon admonish us to emulate his exam- 
ple. It will reprove us for any remissness in our ef- 
forts to reach excellence. A soul without a con- 
science would be the most dangerous gift the Creator 
could bestow on man, since it would take away 
the very guide for his journey through life, and 
a man — if there could be any such — who is not 
possessed of a conscience, might be truly said to 
have been born totally depraved. But as all men have 



REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS. 



49 



a conscience, it is only those who disregard its voice, 
who are inclined to become depraved, though they 
were born innocent. Society has endeavored to have 
as few as possible of such unfortunate men in its 
midst, and as nations have increased in civilization, 
education has done her share to inculcate in the 
youthful mind the obedience due to the voice of 
conscience. 

At no time is the value of such training better il- 
lustrated than in the last moments of our stay on 
earth, while mortal life is ebbing away, atom by 
atom, while our blood is becoming sluggish in its 
circulation, while our body is preparing for death, 
and our soul — impatient as it were, for a flight into 
that shadowy land which our fancy has pictured to 
itself, and yet cannot describe — longs for a release 
from its prison bounds. In these moments the good 
man is calm and placid, confident of a better, purer 
state of existence ; while the wrong-doer looks back 
on his work with ill satisfaction. I must confess, that 
the inculcated dread of future punishment has much 
to do with this latter feeling, and its apprehensions 
may work correspondingly on the fears of the dying 
man. But both punishments and rewards hereafter 
are uncertainties, of which we absolutely know noth- 
ing whatever. No one can with surety say what is 
to be our destiny, or rather, our soul's destiny here- 
after. We only know that when death intervenes, 
body and soul separate. The body sinks into the 
ground, is decomposed, becomes clay once more, 
while the soul goes, we know not where. Were I 
to speak according to the theories of the different 
3 



50 TEE FUTURE A MYSTERY. 

theological systems, I might say that the soul returns 
to render an account to its Maker; but, however 
reasonable this may appear to most men, it is after 
all but hypothesis, an opinion undemonstrable by 
force of our limited understanding and faculties. I 
shall therefore leave any expression of opinion 
whether the soul goes, or does not go to court, to 
the fancy of my readers, and will only remark, that 
while humanity — that is, man — remains constituted 
as he is, none of us, be we ever so learned, ever so 
wise, will ever be able to lift the vail and tell what 
we see of the life hereafter. 



art II. 



CHAPTER XI. 

I have come now to a most important part of this 
treatise, namely, the analysis of the progress made 
by humanity in religious belief. The aim and object 
of this work being to give merely brief, yet concise 
outlines, I cannot go into any extended details. The 
topic has been treated at great length by many dis- 
tinguished authors, yet were an ordinary reader to 
attempt to read all that has been written on the sub- 
ject, he would have a task before him requiring a vast 
deal of time to accomplish. In order to give an insight 
into this matter, I propose to review in brief some 
of the principal creeds prevalent among men, since 
historic times until the present day, and endeavor to 
point out — by no means a gracious task — their chief 
inconsistencies. At the same time, however, I will 
also give due credit to whatever appears to me to be 
good, and while I may have to condemn much, I 
hope also to be able to praise more. 

And here, before I fairly enter on this subject, a 
word or two about myself may not be inappropriate. 
Many a reader of this work, before he will come to 
the last page, may perhaps ask himself, " Why has 
this man written such a book ? Does he think to 

(50 



52 



DELUSIONS. 



overthrow all kinds of faith and all manner of creeds ? 
Does he hope to do any good by his writings?" To 
all these and similar questions, I have but one answer 
to make, and it is a simple, straightforward answer. 
For years and years I have thought much and specu- 
lated much on this subject. In my days of labor, and 
in my hours of leisure, the subject has been upper- 
most in my mind. Thought, I have found out, can- 
not be repressed. I may have been diverted from 
this mental task at times, but sooner or later my 
mind ever returned to it. There was but one way 
for me to act. Thought not being repressible, had 
to be expressed. Thought forces us in fact to speech. 
We have in most cases to give expression by words 
to what we think. While few men may do this only 
to a limited extent, the great majority express their 
thoughts fully and unreservedly. Thoughts long 
withheld and pent up within our breasts, become in- 
deed oppressive and a burden to the mind. Sooner 
or later we have to give expression to them. Thus 
it was in my case. Thus it happened that after years 
of mental suffering, oppressed with the weight of 
these thoughts, I came to put my pen to the paper, 
to lighten my burden, and' to offer this outpouring 
of my soul to the readers of these pages. 

There are in all creeds which have been prevalent, 
or are at this time prevalent on earth among men, a 
great many errors, errors which to call by no harsh- 
er name, may be termed delusions. These errors or 
delusions are instilled into our souls, either by the 
teachings of other men or are generated by wrong 
analogy pursued by our own thoughts. It would be 



BELIEF IN A SUPREME BEING. 



53 



an enormous task to endeavor to give even the out- 
lines of belief of each separate creed or sect. They 
all vary from each other, except in the one point, 
which is, that each claims to be the true faith, and 
each, in consequence, assails the others as false, un- 
orthodox and heretical. It must not be denied, also, 
that each has more or less truth, but there is also a 
great deal of error which the opposing creeds have 
not been slow to point out in their endeavors to as- 
sert their own claim to superiority over the other 
systems. But with this at present I do not propose 
to deal. Our first inquiry, on the contrary, will be 
as to the first condition of religious belief among 
men. 

After long investigation, I am led to the belief that, 
in the first place, men, when they had leisure to think 
of these things, when they came to the consciousness 
of superior power above them, believed that this 
power was exercised and controlled by one Supreme 
Ruler. It has already been seen that, the ruder and 
less educated men were, the fewer objects of adoration 
they had, and there can be no doubt that pure Deism 
was the first belief men entertained, when led to think 
at all on these matters. But as science was in its 
infancy, men knew but little of the laws of Nature, 
as, for instance, the composition of the solar system, 
and they deemed veneration due to everything that 
appeared undemonstrable, and therefore supernatu- 
ral to them. Again, men saw that good and evil 
existed in the world, and it seemed unnatural to 
them, that this mysterious power, which their inward 
consciousness taught them was omnipresent and om- 



54 GOD, ETERNAL. 

nipotent, should be responsible for both good and 
evil. In place of investigating the causes, they fan- 
cied that, instead of one Deity, there must be two ; 
one to do good, the other to work evil. The division 
once made, it was easy to make new ones, to make a 
god for winter and a different one for summer, to 
make a water-god and a land-god. Besides, men 
being unacquainted with science, had no just con- 
ception of the Supreme Being, but attributed to him 
the same passions, the same virtues, and the same 
vices which they had themselves. When men mul- 
tiplied and nations were developed, there arose also 
different religious systems, each one of course suited 
to the physical condition, climate and wants of the 
country the different nations inhabited. Thus in 
Egypt the river Nile was regarded as sacred, and in 
India the Ganges is to this day regarded so by the 
Hindoos. 

Though the number of these imaginary gods in- 
creased from day to day, the principle of Deism still 
survived. Wherever men investigated Nature, they 
saw order and harmony ; whenever they compared 
Nature with the affairs of man, they saw in the latter 
discord and strife. They saw that these resulted 
from the multiplicity of rulers and directors, and 
hence it was but natural that the harmony of the uni- 
verse should be due solely to its being directed by 
one Supreme Being, whose control must necessarily 
be beyond dispute, who could have no equal, who 
could have no beginning and no end. It sounds 
strange for me to write this. No man can imagine 
anything without a beginning or without an end. 



THE CHAIN OF CAUSES. 55 

Yet, nevertheless, it must be true of the Deity, for, 
were God to have had a beginning, we, perforce, 
answer, that there must have been one before him 
who made him. So of the world or existence here- 
after, . concerning which we may speculate in fanciful 
hypotheses, but never know anything definite while 
on earth ; we must lay aside all hope of learning what 
it was clearly the intention of the Almighty should 
be hidden from us. 

I have already stated that the idea of a Supreme 
Being must have suggested itself to the soul by a 
contemplation of Nature. The law of analogy showed 
man that all the objects surrounding him, as well as 
he himself, owed their existence, their being, to some 
unknown cause. "What was that cause?" was nat- 
urally the next question. Men saw the sun and felt 
its power, and they conceived, necessarily, that the 
sun was the cause. This was one of the first delu- 
sions in man's intellectual progress, yet it was a step 
in advance, since it showed that man had begun to 
think, to reason and to investigate. The moon nat- 
urally had the second place assigned to it in man's 
estimation or veneration, and the other stars came 
to be regarded as minor deities. This star-worship 
is undoubtedly the oldest of pagan beliefs, but it had 
soon to give way to a system denoting a greater ad- 
vance in the intellectual growth of the soul. The 
change of the seasons, for instance, and the varying 
degrees of power of the sun obliged men to investi- 
gate their causes, and men naturally argued that the 
sun must be controlled by some greater power, to 
which it in all probability owed its very existence. 



56 PAGAN IDEA8 OF GOD 

Men asked, " Who made the sun?" This question 
suggested the presence, even though invisible, of a 
Supreme Being. 

It is difficult, and perhaps impossible, to state how 
long man was on earth ere he had advanced as far 
as this step in knowledge. Centuries probably 
elapsed before this took place ; and indeed, if we 
compare the infancy of the human race with the in- 
fancy of individual man, we must come to the con- 
clusion that it was not until men had been grouped 
into tribes and nations, that is, till they had multi- 
plied to an extraordinary degree — till they had be- 
gun to amass wealth and secure leisure — that they 
were fitted to ask this question. When the first 
monotheistic system arose, men had already, there- 
fore, emerged from barbarism. The question then 
being settled, that there was a Being who made the 
sun and the stars, men went farther, and asked, 
" Who is that Being ?" " What is he like ?" To this, 
men could make no satisfactory answer, but taking 
the highest excellence of creatures on earth, man 
himself, as a model, they made this Being a some- 
what superior sort of man, who, it was natural, con- 
trolled the sun, moon, and the other stars, as men 
did the other creatures on earth. At the same time 
men acknowledged that this Being controlled man- 
kind also, and that he directed all actions whether 
good or evil. 

But here doubts must now have arisen in men's 
minds. Men could not believe that one and the same 
being would deal out both good and evil, and hence 
they imagined, readily enough, that instead of one 



IN BOTH HEMISPHERES. 



57 



Being, or one God, there were in reality, two ; one 
who worked the good, and the other who worked 
evil. Trace the different systems of Paganism and 
we find this verified and illustrated. Take, for in- 
stance, the oldest monotheistic system, that of Zoro- 
aster. This celebrated philosopher saw the exist- 
ence of good and evil. Hence he attributed to Or- 
muzd (the Supreme Spirit) a power for working both 
good and evil. Zoroaster's disciples went further 
than their master. They assumed the separate co- 
existence both of a Good Spirit and of an Evil one. 
If we turn from Persia to Hindostan, we find this 
delusive division of the Supreme Being carried still 
further. First there appears Brahma, the Creator, 
who as soon as his work is finished, is summarily 
set aside by Vishnu, the Preserver, and Siva, the 
Destroyer. Likewise we find in the old Scandina- 
vian mythology, the mighty Odin placed first as the 
Supreme Being. But not long after appears the son 
of Odin and Frigga, named Thor, who is the god of 
Mischief, and is placed in rivalry with Odin himself. 
Our North American Indians have also both a Good 
and an Evil Spirit, who are supposed to work in op- 
position to each other. But are they any worse in 
this respect than their more enlightened white 
brethren, who, while loudly proclaiming their faith 
in one God, who is all good, have actually in their 
creed a Devil, who is all wicked and powerful be- 
yond belief? This Devil makes all the mischief on 
earth, and has control even of the souls of wicked 
men after their death ! 

It seems, indeed, to have been reserved for us to 



58 EVIL, A BLESSING IN DISGUISE. 

set up in this respect the most erroneous hypothesis 
in the midst of civilization. The old Homeric Tar- 
tarus is surely a paradise compared with the Hell as 
described by the ecclesiastical pen of modern times, 
and the absurdity of this picture is only surpassed 
by the readiness with which men of intelligence can 
credit so shameful a libel on an all-merciful, as well 
as an all-powerful Creator. But, as we shall see 
hereafter, it is a hard task to eradicate error engraft- 
ed on the minds of men almost from their very birth. 
Most men, indeed, are willing, if not forced by ex- 
ternal causes, such as laborious occupations, which 
prevent them from investigating for themselves, to 
accept as true and hence worthy of their belief, what 
is offered to them by others. Very few, comparative- 
ly speaking, will undertake to investigate this subject 
for themselves. Very few men will be found, even 
in this day, who can understand that those things 
which men account to be evil, are but blessings in 
disguise. To illustrate : It would not seem at first 
sight, that a horrible murder could be anything but 
evil. The very slaying of a human being is in itself 
a great crime, but Nature, or rather God, turns this 
evil into good. Why and how he does so, are ques- 
tions difficult to answer, because of the multiplicity 
of circumstances which have to be taken into ac- 
count which we only partly know, or which we are 
ignorant of altogether. Nor will I here be under- 
stood to assert, or even imply, that human punish- 
ment should not be inflicted on the offenders, on the 
supposition that their evil deeds will be turned to, 
or result in, good in the end. While man is unac- 



HUMAN CRIMES PUNISHABLE. 



59 



quainted with God's will, he has to be guided by the 
laws which Society has made for its own protection. 
If this were not the case, evil-disposed persons would 
be easily induced to set all laws at defiance, and the 
community would be at the mercy of the boldest and 
most courageous ruffians. The existence of crime 
must be ascribed solely to the imperfection of human 
laws, and also to the imperfection of their execution. 
The laws of nature, on the contrary, besides being 
perfect, execute themselves, solely, it may be said, to 
bring into order again so many of them as have been 
violated by our conduct. 



6o MULTIPLICATION OF GODS. 



CHAPTER XII. 

We have already seen that men adored the sun 
and the other stars, and that afterwards, when 
brought to the consciousness or conviction of Su- 
preme Creative Power above them, they made a 
division between a Power which worked Good, and 
a Power which wrought Evil. But once arrived at 
this stage, men did not rest contented with having 
two or three gods, but as civilization advanced, so 
the number of their gods multiplied to so great an 
extent, that it required a long catalogue to enumer- 
ate them. These gods furthermore were regularly 
classified according to their supposed power and in- 
fluence over the destinies of human beings, as well 
as other objects in nature. The mythology of the 
ancient nations, though similar in many respects, 
differs considerably, according to the ideas and wants 
of the different nations. Sometimes, indeed, gods 
were transplanted from one system and from one 
nation into those of others, as for instance, the adop- 
tion of the worship of Baal at Samaria from Phoe- 
nicia, or that of Hermes at Rome from Greece. It 
would be almost an endless task to go over all these 
old mythological systems and name the different 
gods and demi-gods which each of their systems 
embraced, and I will, therefore, have to confine my- 



OBJECTS WORSHIPPED BY THE EGYPTIANS. 6l 

self to a brief review of the religious system of the 
most noteworthy nations. Before doing so, I must 
allude to a division of polytheists, namely, those who 
worshipped invisible gods, and those who worshipped* 
idols. The worship of idols, though the most de- 
grading system, no doubt denotes a considerable ad- 
vance in civilization, as it shows that man was al- 
ready capable of producing what, in most cases, 
were works of art, like the Sphynx, the statue of 
Memnon, the Winged Bulls, etc., which no barbar- 
ous people could have produced, and naturally shows 
that men must have had their minds directed to the 
investigation of the Deity. These old idols also show 
the different feelings the ancients had in regard to 
their gods. Was a mild, good god wanted, the 
sculptor or designer would fashion a man with a 
pleasing, agreeable face, while, on the contrary, a 
god of terror would be represented as a picture of 
hideousness. A double-headed god represented ex- 
traordinary power, and wings were added in some 
cases to notice the capacity for superior celerity. 
Often a human head was placed on the body of an 
ox, or of a lion. Nor were men always content with 
the adoration of inanimate idols. Snakes, crocodiles, 
etc., were regarded as sacred by the Egyptians, as 
worthy of worship, and were not allowed to be mo- 
lested. Fear, in this instance, was the cause of this 
veneration. These animals had their feast-days and 
their sacrifices, and to speak wantonly or lightly of 
these supposed deities, was a heinous offence in the 
eyes of the law. Indeed, all the ancients had laws 
framed for the punishment of skeptics, and Socrates, 



62 SYSTEMS REVIEWED. 

the greatest philosopher of his day, was charged 
with speaking lightly of the gods, and on his convic- 
tion, had to suffer the death penalty. Alcibiades, 
likewise, was accused of having desecrated the 
statues of Hermes, and consequently deprived of his 
command of the army and ostracized. 

For the purpose of a review of the principal sys- 
tems of religion and worship among the ancients, I 
have selected the following : 

i. The Assyrian, which was followed also by the 
Medes and Persians. 

2. The Egyptian. 

3. The Indian. 

4. The Chinese. 

5. The Phoenician, which was transplanted to Car- 
thage. 

6. The Hellenic. 

7. The Roman. 

8. The Teutonic. 

There are many more than the systems I have 
enumerated here ; in fact, their number almost ex- 
ceeds belief, and I may have, perhaps, occasion to 
allude to some of these incidentally, but it would be 
too great, and at the same time too unprofitable, a 
task, were I to attempt to notice all these exploded 
delusions. 



THE ASSYKLAN THEORY. 63 



CHAPTER XIII. 

Rollin, while speaking of the religion of the As- 
syrians, and their successors, says, with great good 
sense, that "the most ancient and general idolatry in 
the world is that wherein the sun and moon were the 
objects of worship. This idolatry, as we have al- 
ready seen, was founded upon a mistaken gratitude,- 
which, instead of ascending to the Deity, stopped 
short at the veil which concealed him, and thus was 
diverted from the Creator to one of his creations." 
The ancient worship of the Assyrians, and subse- 
quently of the Medes and Persians, was the worship 
of the sun, and subsequently, as was natural enough, 
of fire. The last remnant of this worship still exists 
at this day in Persia among the Parsees, who claim, 
though erroneously, to follow the creed instituted 
by Zoroaster. This philosopher, as I have already 
stated, maintained that God was a duality, working 
either good or evil. The Magi, his successors, made 
the separation complete by maintaining that there 
were two gods, namely, Ormuzd, the good spirit, and 
Ariman, the bad spirit. As a matter of course, there 
were built to the worship of each god separate tem- 
ples, to which were assigned separate priests. Nor 
did they (the Magi) stop at this, but soon created 
other gods, who were in their turn honored with 
temples, priests and worshippers. This was done on 



64 THE SECOND ZOROASTER 

the principle that the more complicated the system 
of religion becomes — the less it is understood by the 
majority of men, the more sacred it becomes, on ac- 
count of its mystery, and the less liable it is to sustain 
injury by the doubts of skeptical inquirers, This 
system lasted and prospered like the rank weeds in 
neglected gardens for fully six hundred years. Then 
there arose a second Zoroaster, who attempted and 
accomplished a well-needed reformation. 

According to all the accounts which have come 
down to us, he must have been a man possessed of 
large wisdom, great prudence, and still greater cour- 
age, for the Magi, whom he had necessarily to op- 
pose, were adversaries of no mean order. They 
composed a separate caste of the greatest influence,' 
both in political and social life. They were, in addi- 
tion to this, the only body of men who in those rude 
times devoted themselves to the acquisition of know- 
ledge. They kept, as Rollin observes, this know- 
ledge to themselves, in order to maintain their power. 
They were statesmen, priests, philosophers, astrono- 
mers and physicians, and the existence of the State, 
and necessarily the control of it, rested with them. 
They made and unmade kings at pleasure, and these 
kings they made must have been but puppets in their 
hands. 

The second Zoroaster, therefore, was undoubtedly 
a more important personage than it is generally be- 
lieved, and his reforms were probably at first dis- 
countenanced and frowned down by this powerful 
priesthood. He taught the existence of a Supreme 
Being, independent and self-existing, but he retained 



AND HIS TEACHINGS. 6$ 

Ormiizd, the. good spirit, and Ariman, the evil spirit, 
in his system, though he assigned them the subordi- 
nate positions of angels under the Supreme Being. 
He taught further the doctrine of an everlasting 
combat or struggle between these two spirits, and 
this in reality reduced his Supreme Deity to an effete 
ruler, who, having ' created all, left to these two spir- 
its the government of the universe. There is a close 
resemblance in this system to that of the Brahmins, 
of which I will speak hereafter. As a fitting cap- 
stone to his religious instruction, Zoroaster main- 
tained the doctrine of a general resurrection at the 
end of the world, appointing a day of judgment 
when ail men were to be judged in accordance with 
their works. Thereupon the angel of darkness would 
go with his disciples and followers into a world of 
their own, where they would be enveloped in ever- 
lasting gloom and night, as a punishment for the 
evils committed. On the contrary, all good men, 
under the direction of the angel of light, would go 
into a separate world of everlasting light, as a reward 
for their virtue, and the separation between darkness 
and light would ever afterwards be final. It is very 
remarkable to observe how much of this doctrine of 
Zoroaster has crept into the more modern systems 
of religion. This everlasting punishment of the 
wicked, the rewarding of the good, the resurrection, 
the judgment day, heaven and hell, are as much be- 
lieved in at this day as they were in the palmiest day 
of Nineveh's existence. The dogmas are all similar, 
while only the names and minor particulars have 
been changed to suit the changes of the times. 



66 EGYPTIAN PANTHEISM. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

If we go westward from the plains of Mesopota- 
mia to the banks of the Nile, we shall find, instead of 
a dualistic deity, Pantheism prevailing" to the largest 
degree. The only resemblance between the reli- 
gious systems of the two different countries is found 
in the caste-system. The priesthood in Egypt, as in 
Assyria, Media and Persia, was hereditary, and its 
members had, like the Magi, an exclusive monopoly 
of learning. The accounts which have come down 
to us through the Bible and the writings of Herodo- 
tus and other Greek authors, all assign a high anti- 
quity to the Egyptian commonwealth, and mention 
particularly its high degree of civilization. Egypt 
was already a populous country in Abraham's day, 
was ruled by a king whose wealth in cattle and ser- 
vants is expressly mentioned in the account of Abra- 
ham's residence there. Considering that this took 
place some four thousand years ago, it must be fair 
to presume that the account which the Egyptian 
priests themselves gave of the antiquity of their na- 
tion is by no means exaggerated. The monuments 
which have survived this ancient nation are of the 
most stupendous order, and the great soldier who 
seventy years ago, in his memorable order of the 
day, told his Gallic soldiers that forty centuries 



THEIR IDEA OF TRANSMIGRATION. 67 

looked down on them, considerably underrated the 
age of these pyramids. 

Though there is no positive proof to back up the 
assertion, still it may not be wrong to assume, that 
the Pantheism which already prevailed in Egypt in 
Abraham's time was not the original religion, that 
there was a more ancient system, which was simpler, 
but which the priests gradually either changed or 
overthrew altogether. The new system manipulated 
by the priests for their interest, increased to a fright- 
ful extent in course of time. Ere long each city, 
town or village in the country had its own gods, and, 
of course, different worship and different festivals. 
The only gods who were worshipped throughout the 
land were Osiris and Isis. The dogma of transmi- 
gration of souls, which the Egyptians believed in, 
precluded, of course, a belief in a world hereafter ; 
though Herodotus,* curiously enough, alludes to the 
account of Rhampsinitus descending into Hades and 
playing dice with Ceres, and a little further on, he 
states, that the Egyptians say that Ceres and Bacchus 
hold the chief sway in the infernal regions, and that 
the Egyptians were the first ones who asserted the 
doctrine, that the soul is immortal, and that when the 
body perishes in one, it enters into some other ani- 
mal, constantly springing into existence ; and when 
it has passed through the different kinds of terres- 
trial, marine and aerial beings, it again enters into 
the body of a man that is born, and that this revolu- 
tion is made once in three thousand years. 

It seems almost incredible that a people giving 

* Book ii., Sec. 122. 



68 INFLUENCE OF THEIR BELIEF ELSEWHERE. 

such high evidence of civilization as the old Egyp- 
tians, could have believed such a tissue of nonsense. 
Yet such is the fact, and I could adduce many more 
examples to prove that progress in learning and arts 
is very often attended with increase of superstition, 
especially when the State, with its power, intervenes 
and stifles liberty of thought, conscience and speech. 
Of the numerous deities, animate as well as inani- 
mate, which were worshipped in Egypt, it is needless 
to speak. Its influence over other countries, how- 
ever, was considerable. The Jews, the Phoenicians, 
the Greeks and the Romans, all, in their turn, bor- 
rowed much from the Egyptian system, and traces 
of it, as we shall see hereafter, are yet to be found 
even among the civilized nations of Europe and 
America. 



BUDDHISM. 69 



CHAPTER XV . 

The religions of Hindostan — Buddhism and Brah- 
manism — are the oldest theological systems of any 
on the face of the earth which are prevalent at this 
day, and more than one-third of the human race be- 
long to them. They are pure and simple products 
and developments of Eastern Asia, one of the most 
densely populated parts of the world, where neces- 
sarily the accumulation of wealth is in the hands of 
a few, where the government has from immemorial 
times been nothing but despotism, and where the 
mass of the people, if not slaves to the soil, were 
compelled, in order to subsist, to give all their time 
to labor. As a necessary consequence the masses 
are kept in profound ignorance and darkness. To 
add to this, the division of the nation into Castes has 
necessarily tended to degrade the great majority of 
Hindoos to as great an extent as the Egyptians were 
in olden times. The great majority of the people 
were the laborers, the real workers, the Bais (mer- 
chants) and Sudras (laborers), while the Brahmans 
(priests) and Chultree (warriors) lived on the earnings 
of the two first classes. The origin of these Castes 
cannot positively be determined, neither can the 
time when they were instituted by men. 

Buddhism, which is the oldest of the two creeds, 



;o 



0BI01N OF BBAHMANISM. 



teaches and inculcates the transmigration of souls. 
A man, or a being, can turn by degrees and is re- 
born from a clod to a divinity. There are a hundred 
and thirty -six hells in the Buddhist religion in which 
the evil-doers are born over again, while, at the 
same time, there are as many heavens to furnish new 
birth-places for the virtuous. This transmigration 
is, however, terminated by Nivoana, which means 
Oblivion. But man, or rather the soul, has to go 
through thousands of changes ere his misery, is end- 
ed, and he is finally allowed to be obliterated. No 
existence of a Supreme Being enters into the Budd- 
hist religion. The Buddha himself is not a god, but 
only represented as the ideal of what a man may be- 
come. Though deficient in elevation of thought, 
Buddhism nevertheless inculcates a s}^stem of moral- 
ity which would do no discredit to any code. Broth- 
erly love, charity and sympathy are essential duties 
enjoined by the Buddha upon his followers, and on 
the whole, it has been justly observed, that Budd- 
hism is more catholic, is more tolerant than Brah- 
manism. How it happened that this creed was dis- 
placed in Hindostan by Brahmanism, and why it was, 
that it flourished and still flourishes in the Eastern 
portion of Asia, especially in Thibet and China, I 
will not here stop to inquire. 

Brahmanism, the later religion of India, and the 
chief creed of its people even at the present time, 
may be said to have originated at first from Mono- 
theism. As I have already stated, Brahma, the 
Creator, is the Chief Deity, who, having done his 
work, resigns the reins of power to Vishnu, the 



RESULTS OF TEE CASTE SYSTEM. 



71 



Preserver, and Siva, the Destroyer. The analogy 
between this and Zoroaster's system is sufficiently 
striking to need more than a passing notice. As else- 
where, the dualistic system led in course of time to 
polytheism. The number of deities increased as fast 
in India as the people itself. To-day the lower 
classes of India are computed at 150,000,000 souls. 
About one-half of the whole population, is steeped in 
the lowest degree of polytheism. That this deplo- 
rable state results from the Caste system, which, 
while it leaves the majority of the people uneducat- 
ed, gives to a ridiculously small minority all the 
power, cannot well be controverted. The Brah- 
mins of India seem, like the majority of priests in all 
other countries, to have been more intent on pre- 
serving their own supremacy than on teaching their 
people the truth. They therefore bound the chain 
of superstition tighter and closer around the unfor- 
tunate Hindoos, and while they thus made them- 
selves powerful and rich, they sank their countrymen 
into the most deplorable state of degradation. .They 
are really the cause of India's subjection to a foreign 
power. They, the chosen teachers of their nation, 
for fear of progress and loss of power, kept their pu- 
pils in barbarism. Almost everywhere else on the 
face of the earth is there a national spirit, but such a 
feeling is unknown to India. This great country has 
been ruled for centuries by foreigners, and it is only 
within late years that natives under British rule have 
been employed as subordinates in the civil adminis- 
tration of the empire. Such a thing as liberty is en- 
tirely foreign to the Hindoos. 



>]2 A BRAEMINICAL APOTHEOSIS. 

Had the Brahmins done their duty, this great 
country, so favored by nature, would be to-day a 
free and mighty empire, instead of being a depend- 
ency of a small island thousands of miles distant 
from it. Nor can these faithless preachers plead ig- 
norance themselves, for they did not even believe 
what they preached. They were sufficiently en- 
lightened ; but with the selfishness of an hereditary 
priesthood, they feared the loss of power, if the mass 
of the people were to receive instruction. The 
proofs that the Brahmins had a true conception of 
the Supreme Being, are furnished by themselves, 
and are very numerous. As an illustration I ' will 
only give the following apotheosis from the great 
epic the Bhagavadgita,* which is as elevated in 
thought as the most lofty writings of our own au- 
thors. It is in these words : 

" O mighty Being, who art the prime Creator, 
eternal God of Gods, the World's Mansion. Thou 
art the incorruptible Being, distinct from all things 
transient. Thou art before all Gods, the ancient 
Pooroosh (vital soul), and the Supreme Supporter of 
the Universe. Thou knowest- all things, and art 
worthy to be known ; thou art the Supreme Man- 
sion, and by thee, O Infinite Form, the Universe was 
spread abroad. Reverence be unto thee before and 
behind ; reverence be unto thee on all sides. O thou, 
who art all in all, Infinite is thy power arid thy glory. 
Thou art the father of all things, animate and inani- 
mate. Thou art the wise instructor of the Whole, 
worthy to be adored. There is none like unto thee ; 

* See Article Religion in Appendix to Robertson's India. 



BBAHMINICAL CONCEPTIONS OF GOD. 73 

where, then, in the three worlds is there one above 
thee ? Wherefore I bow down ; and with my body 
prostrate upon the ground, crave thy mercy, Lord ! 
worthy to be adored, for thou shouldest bear with 
me, even as a father with his son, a friend with his 
friend, a lover with his beloved." 

Such was the Brahminical conception of the Deity ; 
yet regardless of the knowledge they had of the 
truth, they chose, in order to perpetuate their power, 
to plunge their nation into the wild chaos of poly- 
theism. How very strange does it look when we 
compare their acts to their words ! The men who 
built the pagodas at Elephanta and Tanjore for the 
worship of idols, are the same men who speak of God 
as follows : 

" As God is immaterial, he is above conception ; 
as he is invisible, he can have no form ; but from what 
we behold of his works, we may conclude that he is 
eternal, omnipotent, knowing all things and is present 
everywhere." 

This does not sound much like paganism, and yet 
it is the language of men who were the greatest pro- 
moters of idol-worship, of men who strenuously in- 
sisted on the vigorous performance of the thousand 
and one minutiae of the ritualism they had establish- 
ed. Their conception was correct, but their teach- 
ings were the greatest and most scandalous imposi- 
tion. 



74 



CHINESE BUDDHISM. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

China, the most populous country on the earth, 
is the next in the order of our review. I have al- 
ready spoken of Buddhism, as having been brought 
into the Flowery Kingdom from Hindostan, and it is 
to-day the principal religion of the State. As the 
Buddha ignores, as we have seen before, the exist- 
ence of a Supreme Being, teaching that future ob- 
livion is the state of greatest happiness, it is clear, 
therefore, that the belief of the Chinese is entirely 
materialistic. The doctrine of the transmigration of 
souls is carried further in China than anywhere else. 
According to Chinese Buddhism, the human soul may 
be transplanted into an ape, an ox, or a toad even. 
It is only according to the soul's conduct in life that 
transmigration changes. Is man good and virtuous, 
the soul is born anew in some gentle shape ; is he 
vicious and wicked, he may become, after his human 
death, a crawling insect or a venomous serpent. As 
regards the Deity, there is no trace of any such ex- 
alted idea as the Brahmins privately entertained in 
regard to the Supreme Being. Nor does Confucius, 
the great national teacher of the Chinese, whose 
teachings are still followed by the upper classes, give 
a better idea of god than the priests of Buddha do. 
In fact, he seems to have been fearful of entering the 



TEACHINGS OF CONFUCIUS. 



7$ 



field of investigation, shrinking as it were, from 
speculations on the hereafter, and he simply contents 
himself with advising men as to their earthly career. 
He says, for instance : 

"I teach you nothing but what you might learn 
yourselves, viz. : the observance of the three funda- 
mental laws of relation, between sovereign and sub- 
ject, father and child, husband and wife ; and the 
five capital virtues — universal charity, impartial jus- 
tice, conformity to ceremonies and established usages, 
rectitude of heart and mind, and pure sincerity." 

All this is very well as far as it goes, but may we 
not ask whether such limited teachings can, or ought 
to satisfy the human soul ? It is simply setting forth 
the doctrine of passive obedience without giving en- 
couragement or liberty to go and search farther into 
the mysteries of nature, and into the causes and ob- 
jects of man's existence on earth. That this doc- 
trine of contentment, of simple acceptation of fate, 
has to a great degree upheld the political as well as 
the religious institutions of this great empire, must 
be apparent to every student of history. It is hard- 
ly a wonder that so submissive a faith should prove 
a useful ally to the despotic rulers of China, and that 
it should have been exalted to the dignity of the 
State religion. But that it did not satisfy the major- 
ity of the people is proved by the fact that Buddhism, 
a strange creed coming from India, should have 
been able to attract to its temples the majority of 
Confucius's own countrymen. Even to the Chi- 
nese, such a religion as that of Buddha, with its 
frightful creed, was preferable to the mild, submis- 



76 CONFUCIUS CONSERVATIVE. 

sive, negative teachings of Confucius. The doc- 
trines of Confucius, it seems to me, are the embodi- 
ment of conservatism. Nothing must be changed 
in the established order of things. The most ob- 
noxious government is to be upheld, the most ridic- 
ulous usages have to be followed. There is to be no 
progress ; only submission. These teachings have 
made China what she is, in a social as well as a po- 
litical view. The art of printing, the manufacture of 
gunpowder, or of paper, for instance, were, till Eu- 
rope broke the blockade and opened the country to 
the world, as rude and as primitive in China as their 
first inventors had left them. It is only by the 
force of barbaric bayonets that China has been forced 
in spite of herself, to leave the old beaten path for a 
more progressive one. 



TEE PECEN1CIANS. 



77 



CHAPTER XVII. 

There has but little authentic information come 
down to us regarding Phoenicia and its more power- 
ful offspring, Carthage. Save a few coins and votive 
tablets, what we find in the old Greek authors and 
in the Bible is all that we know of Sidon and Tyre, 
while the account of the Carthaginians left to us by 
the Roman historians is hardly more ample. The 
Phoenicians were of the Semitic race, and, inhabiting 
the same country as the Hebrews, must have been 
in close connection with them. Indeed the allusions 
to such an alliance are frequent in the Bible, and as 
the Phoenicians were a sea-faring nation, while the 
Hebrews mainly followed agricultural pursuits, the 
entente cordiale between them must have been both 
natural and profitable. Their language, too, was 
probably nearly the same, while some of their cus- 
toms, such as circumcision, it is expressly stated in 
Herodotus, they both learned from the Egyptians. 
We have the authority of Herodotus for stating, that 
the Phoenicians emigrated to Syria from the Eastern 
shore of the Red Sea, whence it is more than probable 
that they were driven out by their powerful Egyp- 
tian neighbors. Certain it is that Herodotus saw 
statues to Hercules both in Egypt and in Tyre, thus 
proving that the Phoenicians were once, if not dwell- 






;8 PASSAGE FROM HERODOTUS. 

ing in Egypt, living close enough to it to adopt some 
of the Egyptian deities. It is also not at all impro- 
bable that the emigration of the Phoenicians led to 
that of the Hebrews out of Egypt, for Egypt then 
was too thickly populated, and the years of famine 
recorded in the Bible, denote plainly that the land 
did not suffice for the wants of the inhabitants, and 
that the promise of a man sitting elsewhere beneath 
his own vine and fig-tree,, was in those days as great 
an inducement to emigrate as one hundred and sixty 
acres of land in the West are with us to-day. 

As usual, the time of this Phoenician emigration 
is difficult to determine. The ancients all claimed a 
higher antiquity for man than we do. The following 
passage from Herodotus is exceedingly obscure on 
the subject, but it is the only one upon which any- 
thing like a calculation can be based : 

" But Hercules is one of the ancient gods oPthe 
Egyptians, and as they themselves say, it was 17,000 
years before the reign of Amasis, when the number 
of their gods was increased from eight to twelve, of 
which Hercules was accounted one. 

"And being desirous of obtaining CERTAIN informa- 
tion from whatever source I could, / sailed to Tyre in 
Phoenicia, having learned that there was there a tem- 
ple dedicated to Hercules, and I saw it richly adorn- 
ed with a great variety of offerings, and in it were 
two pillars, one of fine gold and the other of emerald 
stone, both shining exceedingly at night. Convers- 
ing with the priests of this god, I inquired how long 
the temple had been built, and I found that neither 
did they agree with the Greeks, for they said that 



CARTHAGINIAN DEITIES. 



79 



the temple had been built at the time when Tyre 
was founded, and that 2,300 years had elapsed since 
the foundation of Tyre." 

Now Tyre itself was a colony of Sidon, and conse- 
quently considerably younger. It must, therefore, 
be assumed, that four thousand years have elapsed 
since the foundation of Tyre, and nearly five thou- 
sand since that of Sidon. Before that time the Phoe- 
nicians, probably wishing to escape the Egyptian 
yoke, and more especially the forced labor on the 
Pyramids, must have emigrated while yet in a state 
of semi-civilization. It was but natural that they as 
well as the Hebrews should have adopted some of 
the Egyptian customs and the worship of some of 
their gods. Whether this Hercules of which He- 
rodotus speaks is the Baal mentioned in the Bible, 
cannot be determined with certainty, though it is 
more than probable that such was the case. The 
people, judging from Herodotus's description of this 
temple, must have been extremely wealthy, far more 
so than the Greeks were at that time, for it was not 
till the days of Pericles that Athens, the wealthiest 
Greek town, began to enrich herself partly by com- 
merce and partly also by tribute levied from her so- 
called allies. Hercules, or Baal, was perhaps the 
chief deity of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians, 
but the religious system of these nations was as poly- 
theistic as those of the other Semitic nations ex- 
cept the Hebrews. Indeed the Carthaginians had 
five or six orders of deities, and Polybius has trans- 
mitted to us a treaty of peace, concluded between 
Philip, son of Demetrius, king of Macedonia, and the 



80 SACRIFICES TO MOLOCH. 

Carthaginians, which sheds some light on the sub- 
ject. " This treaty/' it is solemnly declared, " is con- 
cluded in the presence of Jupiter, Juno and Apollo ; 
in the presence of the demon or genius of the Car- 
thaginians, of Hercules and Iolaus ; in the presence 
of Mars, Triton and Neptune ; in the presence of all 
the confederate gods of the Carthaginians ; and of 
the sun, the moon, and the earth ; in the presence of 
the rivers, meads and waters ; in the presence of all 
those gods who possess Carthage" 

The frightful immolation of children to Baal or 
Moloch, which was practiced alike by the Phoeni- 
cians and Carthaginians, and at times even by the 
Hebrews, shows their conception of a god of wrath, 
so often mentioned in the Bible, rather than of an 
all-merciful Creator, who looks upon men as his 
children. It does not speak well for their advance- 
ment in civilization, and Dionysius, the tyrant of 
Syracuse, did himself honor when he stipulated in 
his treaty with the Carthaginians, " that they should 
offer no more human sacrifices." Of late years, owing 
to extensive researches near Tunis, on the site of old 
Carthage, we have learned more of the religions, 
manners and customs of this once powerful nation ; 
but it is only by the aid of monuments. Their lite- 
rature has entirely perished, and were it not for the 
scanty means of information the authorities I have 
quoted have given us, we should know next to noth- 
ing of the oldest commercial nation of historic times. 



HELLENIC NOTIONS OF THE DEITY. 8 1 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

We come now to consider the religious customs 
and the conceptions of the Deity of one of the most 
remarkable races of antiquity ; namely, that of the 
Hellenes. Our old guide Herodotus relates the fol- 
lowing : 

" Whence each of the gods sprung, whether they 
existed always, and of what form they were, was so 
to speak, unknown till yesterday. For I am of opin- 
ion that Hesiod and Homer lived four hundred years 
before my time, and these were they who framed a 
theogony for the Greeks, and gave names to the 
gods, and assigned to them honors and arts, and de- 
clared their several forms." 

Perhaps no mythological system has been better 
preserved and also more closely studied than the 
Grecian. The system is one of great harmony and 
beauty. Though it is polytheistic to a large degree, 
and the gods are numbered by hundreds, they do 
not come in contact with each other. Each god has 
his own sphere of usefulness assigned to him, while 
at the same time in Zeus we can recognize still the 
traces of the original monotheism of the one Su- 
preme Being who guides and controls the universe. 
The Hellenic race, or at least the people who in- 
habited Greece and the ancient isles, and sent colo- 
4* 



82 THEOGONY OF THE GREEKS. 

nies to Italy, Thrace and Asia Minor, cannot be con- 
sidered as a purely distinct race. Besides the Helle- 
nes, the same system comprised Pelasgians, Phoeni- 
cians and colonists who peopled other countries. 
Hence the religious worship of the Greeks was a 
mixture, to which each nationality contributed a 
part. The gods of Hellas multiplied with the influx 
of new comers, and when Hesiod and Homer, as He- 
rodotus informs us, framed a theogony for the coun- 
try, there must have been felt among the Greeks the 
necessity for simplifying and putting into something 
like harmony, the different religious systems preva- 
lent among the people. As the country moreover 
was small, and communications between the different 
cities and towns easy and rapid, the bond of union 
necessarily was stronger than it would be in coun- 
tries like Egypt or India, where it required long and 
tedious journeys to go from one place to another. 
In addition to this, the institution of the Olympian 
and other games and the oracles furnished suitable 
opportunities for the inhabitants of Hellas to ex- 
change views, to reconcile differences and to cement 
the bonds of union. Whether Hesiod and Homer 
really framed this theogony for the Greeks, as Hero- 
dotus says, is not altogether clear, but at all events 
they had a large share in the work. The functions 
of the priesthood were open to all men. Priests, as 
a separate caste, as we have already seen in India 
and Egypt, do not figure in the religious system of 
Hellas, for the Greek mind had too much of a demo- 
cratic tendency to allow the existence of an heredi- 
tary sacerdotal oligarchy. Indeed the magistrates 



THEIR DEMI- GOBS. 



83 



often performed the functions of the priests in the 
public religious exercises, while the head of each 
family was charged with the exercise and supervision 
of religious duties at home. 

The favorite god of the Greeks seems to have been 
Apollo, and his oracles, where through his servants 
he made known his divinations, are numerous. The 
most famous of these, of course, is Delphi, in North- 
ern Greece, which may be said to have formed the 
nucleus for the religious Greek world. Hither 
came the representatives of the Hellenic common- 
wealths, as well as private individuals, for counsel be- 
fore undertaking any important matter. Nor did the 
Greeks alone go to Delphi ; we also know through 
history, that the princes of Asia, such as Croesus, for 
instance, sent to the Pythoness for advice, which, by 
the way, seems always to have been liberally paid 
for. But Apollo himself, though the favorite god of 
the Greeks, was only one of the twelve chief deities. 

to wit : 

Jupiter, Pluto, 

Mars, Juno, 

Mercury, Minerva, 

Apollo, Venus, 

Vulcan, Diana, 

Neptune, Ceres. 

Then there was a second class of demi-gods, ever 
increasing in number, like the saints in the Roman 
Catholic church of our day. Every trade had its 
protecting deity, and was honored accordingly. Even 
Socrates is described as ending his days with the 
exclamation : 



84 GREEK OFFERINGS TO THESE GOBS. 

" Crito, we owe a cock to JEsculapius (the god of 
medicine). Discharge that vow for me, and pray do 
not forget it;" 

Though to Jupiter was assigned the first place 
among the gods, he is himself the son of Chronos 
(Time), thus showing that the Greek theogony must 
have been in the first place monotheistic, and that it 
was changed gradually into polytheism, owing main- 
ly to the advent of new comers, either from Egypt 
or Asia, who brought with them not alone the art of 
letters, but also the gods which they had worshipped 
in the homes they had left. But this polytheism, de- 
grading as it doubtless was, is far superior to that of 
the Phoenicians and Egyptians. Human sacrifices 
were abhorrent to the Hellenic race, and the worship 
of Baal was never instituted in Greece. The offer- 
ings the Hellenes made, consisted principally of 
money, golden or silver vessels, and works of art. 
The temples were so overflowing with these trea- 
sures, that more than once they fell victims to the 
cupidity of princes and armies. Delphi was plun- 
dered and sacked several times. Nero carried away 
from it to Rome over five hundred statues, and yet 
in Pliny's days there were over three thousand stat- 
ues remaining there. The temple of Diana at Ephe- 
sus, burned by Herostratus on the day Alexander 
the Great was born, was one of the wonders of the 
age ; so likewise was the temple of Minerva at Ath- 
ens ; and both were filled with the gifts of the faith- 
ful. The priests, though they encouraged this liber- 
ality, had yet only a temporary interest, and did not 
exercise any political influence, nor did they have 



ED VGA TION OBLIGA TORT. 8 5 

any charge of public education. Over this the State 
watched, herself, with jealous care, and in Athens, 
under Solon's law, no son was bound to support the 
parent who had neglected to educate him. This ele- 
mentary education laid the foundation for the philo- 
sophical schools, which to a great degree destroyed 
the superstition engendered by the polytheistic sys- 
tem, of which we shall speak more fully in the next 
chapter. 



86 PHILOSOPHICAL SCHOOLS OF THE QUEERS. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

I HAVE come now to speak of the philosophical 
schools of the Greeks and of their influence upon 
posterity. Much as we owe the Hellenic race, it 
may be safely said, that if we had borrowed nothing- 
else from them but their philosophy, we should still 
be more indebted to them than to any other people. 
The most remarkable feature we have to notice at 
the outset, is the fact, that it is in the Greek colonies 
in Asia Minor and Italy, where we find philosophy 
flourishing long before it became a favorite study in 
the mother country. Thus, for instance, Thales, 
commonly called the father of Greek philosophy, was 
a native of Miletus, a Greek city in Asia Minor, and, 
moreover, of Phoenician origin. Heraclitus, another 
philosopher, flourished in Ephesus, and Anaxagoras, 
the most illustrious name in philosophy before Soc- 
rates, was born at Alazomone, an Ionic city in Lydia ; 
Xenophanes, another native of Asia Minor, who fled 
from there when Colophon, his native city, was taken 
by the enemy, went not to Greece, but to Italy, and 
founded at Elea the Ionic-Italian philosophic school. 
Pythagoras, better known than Xenophanes, was 
born at Samos, one of the islands on the coast of Asia 
Minor, and finding tyranny established by Polycra- 
tes on his return from his travels, went to Crotona, 



WEALTH OF THE GREEKS. 8/ 

in Southern Italy, where he founded the celebrated 
philosophical school bearing his name. 

All this tends to prove to me that the colonies of 
Hellas must have been, before the Persian war, richer 
and more prosperous, and consequently further ad- 
vanced in learning than the States and cities of 
Greece, which originally founded these colonies. 
Nor is this unnatural, when we consider the differ- 
ence in the physical geography of Hellas, compared 
with that of Asia Minor or Southern Italy. While 
in the latter countries agriculture is attended with 
less labor, and the earth yields more abundant re- 
turns, the mountains of the Peloponnesus, of Attica, 
of Bceotia and other parts of Greece made agricul- 
ture a more difficult task, and the people attended 
more to rearing cattle and sheep — a nomadic occu- 
pation — than tilling the soil. This is in fact as true 
of the Greece of to-day as it was of the Hellas of 
old. While the rearing of cattle promotes migratory 
habits, agriculture, on the contrary, fixes men to the 
soil and promotes a regular mode of life, besides 
encouraging the more rapid acquisition of wealth. 
Moreover, the intercourse of the Greeks in the mo- 
ther country with other nations was not of an extend- 
ed character until the Persian invasion. It was this 
event which directed the attention of the Grecian 
States, and especially of Athens, to conquests abroad. 
As a necessary consequence, when Greek commerce 
became extended, wealth began to flow into the treas- 
uries of the cities on the sea-coast. The Athenians 
made but a small sacrifice when, acting on the advice 
of Themistocles, they left their houses at the ap- 



88 . SCHOOLS OF ATHENS. 

proach of the Persian army under Xerxes. But, on 
the contrary, when Athens had become rich under 
the administration of Pericles, they could no longer 
be induced to leave their homes. Instead of doing 
this, they stoutly defended their wealth as long as 
they could against the Lacedaemonian army under 
Lysander. 

Though the philosophical schools of Athens be- 
came in course of time the most celebrated in the 
world, it was not till the age of Pericles — till the city, 
as we have already seen, had become wealthy — that 
we hear of philosophical schools prospering on Attic 
soil. Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicu- 
rus, Zeno and others associated with Athenian phi- 
losophy, never could have flourished at Athens, had 
not Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon and 
Pericles paved the way for them. Though the Ionic 
school, which flourished in Asia and Italy, was much 
the older, it was decidedly inferior in ability to its 
successor, the Athenian. This improvement indi- 
cates the progress in civilization which the Greeks 
had made from the days of Homer to the end of the 
Peloponnesian war. While Thales and his immedi- 
ate successors had only their own intellect to guide 
them in their investigations, the later schools had the 
scientific acquisitions of centuries to assist them. It 
is not surprising, therefore, that while the Ionic phi- 
losophers sought to find in water, fire or air, the ori- 
gin of existence, and consequently leaned toward 
pantheism, the school of the Athenians under Socra- 
tes was better able to discern the truth and to pro- 
claim the existence of a Supreme Being, to whom 



DECLINE OF POLYTHEISM. 89 

the origin of existence was to be ascribed. Still, 
however, the more advanced the Athenian school 
was over the Ionic, its existence was rather one of 
sufferance, than that of an institution sanctioned by 
the State. The reasons for this can be readily ex- 
plained by looking at the condition of the people. 
Though the upper classes, who had leisure and facil- 
ities for education, may have abhorred the paganism 
of the age, though they may have been skeptics, still 
the great mass of the people were not by education 
fitted to break through the traditionary superstition 
and discern the truth. It ought not, therefore, to be 
surprising to us to read that Socrates and Aristotle 
were accused of impiety, that the former actually 
had to suffer death, and that the latter would have 
shared the same fate had he not saved his life by a 
timely flight from Athens. 

Notwithstanding these drawbacks, and even perse- 
cutions, the seed planted by these schools grew and 
ripened in course of time. Though polytheism for 
centuries continued to be the State religion, its power 
gradually declined and became weakened, and so 
effete and obsolete did it become, that when finally 
it was supplanted by Christianity, it gave way almost 
without a struggle. Its day of usefulness had passed, 
its mission had been fulfilled. Philosophy, on the 
contrary, survived. It was transplanted from coun- 
try to country, and many of its teachings, as we shall 
see hereafter, were incorporated with and became 
part and parcel of the new religion. Indeed the in- 
fluence which the works and teachings of Socrates, 
Plato, Aristotle and other philosophers of the Athe- 



9 o 



THE IONIC SCHOOL. 



nian school have exercised on the succeeding gener- 
ations down even to the present day, can hardly be 
over-estimated, and though through our increased 
wealth, and consequently increased means of acquir- 
ing knowedge, we may be far in advance of the scien- 
tific status of the pre-Christian times, it ought to be 
remembered that those schools I am at present speak- 
ing of, laid the foundation for this increase and accu- 
mulation of knowledge. 

In speaking first of the Ionic school of philosophy, 
which claims the precedence on account of seniorit}^, 
I must say a word in regard to the remarkable anti- 
quity of the Semitic and Aryan birth-places of civi- 
lization. When we look at the map of the countries 
bordering on the south and east of the Mediterra- 
nean, we perceive two chains of mountains, the Tau- 
rus and Anti-Taurus, which separate the country 
into two equal parts. That to the south was inhab- 
ited by the Semitic race, which eventually extended 
its dominion along the African sea-coast to the straits 
of Gibraltar. North of the Taurus, however, the 
Aryan race first planted the banner of civilization ; 
and it is in Miletus, a city on the banks of the Masan- 
der, that Thales, the father of philosophy, lived and 
taught. The fact that European civilization, com- 
bining both the Semitic and Aryan systems, should 
have originated in such close proximity, is the more 
remarkable when we consider how different these 
systems became in course of time, and what labor, 
blood and treasure had to be expended before the 
two were finally amalgamated, formed and developed 
European civilization. Most sorrowful, too, is it to 



TEACHINGS OF THALES. 



91 



record the waste and desolation of these birth-places 
of science ; the ignorance and apathy of the people 
who live there at the present day, among the old 
monuments of antiquity ; and we must confess that 
there is much of truth in what Volney says regard- 
ing that country in the opening chapters of his 
" Ruins." 

Though Thales is generally spoken of as the father 
of philosophy, it would be wrong to assume that he 
was the first philosopher. Indeed, it is more proba- 
ble that there existed before his time, at Miletus and 
the other Ionic cities in Asia Minor, schools of in- 
struction in philosophy, and that these schools paved 
the way for future investigators. At all events, the 
name of Thales is the first prominent one in the his- 
tory of philosophy, and it is perhaps his superiority 
over his predecessors which has caused him to be 
remembered and the others to be forgotten. Thales 
was the first one who traced all beginnings to one 
primary cause. The main doctrine of his philosoph- 
ical system was, that water or fluid substance was 
the single original element from which everything 
came, and to which everything returned. Anax- 
imenes, one of his followers, on the contrary, con- 
tended that the air was the source of life, while He- 
raclitus, of Ephesus, regarded fire as the primary 
form. 

In opposition to this " Elementary" school of philos- 
ophy, stands Anaxagoras, of Clazomenas, who was 
the first of all the Greek philosophers to discard this 
elementary theory, and boldly to announce his con- 
viction, that there must be a Supreme Being, who 



9 2 



THE SCHOOL OF PYTHAGORAS 



had not alone created man, animals and plants, but 
also the elements themselves. Anaxagoras, however, 
lived one hundred and fifty years after Thales, and 
his more correct conception of philosophy is owing 
as much to the advancement of civilization in that 
time as to his own investigations. He is, in truth, 
the connecting link between the Ionic and the Athe- 
nian schools of philosophy. Like the ideas of Socra- 
tes, who was educated by a pupil of Anaxagoras, 
named Archelaus, the new doctrines enunciated by 
him met with opposition from the priests, but being 
protected by Pericles, Anaxagoras escaped persecu- 
tion and withdrew finally to Lampsachus, where he 
died at an advanced age. 

The school founded at Crotona in Italy by Pytha- 
goras ought to be noticed for its remarkable organi- 
zation, presenting the anomalous spectacle of a 
school, avowedly philosophic, taking upon itself the 
duties of State Government. The school, or rather 
brotherhood of the Pythagoreans, must have been, 
however numerous, still exclusive, and, therefore, 
aristocratic in its character, and excited the jealousy 
of the people. Their overthrow and downfall as a 
political association was natural and only a question 
of time. Regarding the system of Pythagoras, little 
of a reliable character has come down to us. It 
seems to have been founded on dualistic principles, 
where the Finite and the Infinite were opposed to 
each other. This Finite was Number One, from 
which all other things or numbers proceeded. The 
ceremonies and mysteries which the Pythagoreans 
made use of in their admission of members, doubt- 



AT CROTONA. 



93 



less contributed greatly to their preservation as a 
brotherhood even after their political downfall in the 
war between Crotona and Sybaris. 



94 SOCRATES, PLATO AND ARISTOTLE. 



CHAPTER XX. 

From Anaxagoras we naturally come to Socrates, 
Plato and Aristotle, the three greatest names in Hel- 
lenic philosophy, who, after the downfall of the po- 
litical Athens, made that city illustrious as a seat of 
learning, and who have also left their imprint on 
civilization for all times to come. It is, perhaps, for- 
tunate for the world, that these great men should 
have lived and taught at the time when Athens was 
no longer the mistress of Greece, because, if war and 
politics had been the chief occupation of the young 
men of the city, the philosophical schools, in all 
probability, would not have existed ; because there 
would have been no scholars, for it is certain that no 
warlike people, no nation engaged in steady warfare, 
has time for the pursuits of literature. The two 
periods from the commencement of the French 
Revolution to the pacification of Europe in 1815, and 
from that year to the July Revolution in 1830, are 
fitting illustrations. Whoever contrasts French lit- 
erature under the Empire, with its condition under 
the Restoration, will acknowledge the justice of this 
remark. Rome, also, the greatest nation of ancient 
historic times, did not produce its authors till the 
days of Cicero and Csesar, simply because the Re- 
public ere that time required the services of its citi- 



WHAT SOCRATES TAUGHT. g$ 

zens in the field. The Romans having to take up 
arms for the defence and aggrandizement of the na- 
tion, had naturally no leisure either to write books 
or to read them. It was not, in fact, till after Octa- 
vius had made himself master of the Empire and had 
closed the temple of Janus, a sign that there was no 
war carried on by the State, that literature began to 
flourish at Rome, and that we hear the Augustan 
age commemorated as a new era in the progress of 
letters. Then really began the literary activity of 
Rome, and we have in rapid succession, such au- 
thors as Virgil, Horace, Seneca, Livy, Tacitus, Pliny, 
Arrian, and other writers who found patrons among 
the wealthy citizens as well as at the Imperial court. 
The case of Athenian literature is nearly similar. 
Though the Peloponnesian war ended with the de- 
struction of the political supremacy of Athens, it at 
the same time gave more impetus to cultivation of 
literature. Men who no longer could distinguish 
themselves as soldiers or politicians, turned their at- 
tention to literary avocations. The leisure which 
the upper classes of the Athenians enjoyed from the 
possession of wealth, was now used for mental cul- 
tivation. Had not Socrates lived at this period of 
the political decline of his country, we may well 
doubt whether Plato, Xenophon, Crito or others, 
would have listened to discourses on the immortality 
of the soul, or other kindred subjects. 

Socrates himself has left no writings behind to 
show us what he taught, and it is only through 
Plato, Xenophon, and other men who attended his 
lectures, that we have any account of his life and of 



9 6 PLATO'S CONCEPTION OF GOD. 

his teachings. Still, there is so much mixed up in 
these accounts, and, perhaps, so much more ascribed 
to the great philosopher than he really taught, that 
it is impossible to give an accurate statement of the 
extent of his investigations. For instance, we can- 
not assert with certainty that Socrates ever announc- 
ed his belief in the existence of a Supreme Being, of 
one God in opposition to the polytheistical State Re- 
ligion. But as he taught the immortality of the 
soul, we should imagine that he was tending in his 
system toward monotheism. This is the more prob- 
able if we believe that the language ascribed to him 
by Plato in his Phcedon was really used by him. In 
that work Socrates is made to say, that after death 
the soul is conducted by a species of angel (called a 
daimoti) to the judgment-place, where rewards and 
punishments are given to the released souls accord- 
ing to their deserts. Whether this is Socrates's hy- 
pothesis, or Plato's, cannot now be definitely ascer- 
tained, for the reason that Plato almost invariably 
substitutes Socrates as the chief speaker in his dia- 
logues. No doubt much of it belongs to Socrates, 
but Plato's share, especially in the amplification and 
explanations of the Socratic system, must have been 
considerable. 

Plato's conception of the Supreme Being was the 
simplest, and at the same time, the most exalted. 
God he describes as the fountain of all force, and the 
creator of all order in the universe, — the sum of 
whose most exalted attributes and the substantial 
essence of whose perfections may, as contrasted with 
our finite and partial aspect of things, be expressed 



HIS PHILOSOPHIC SYSTEM. 



97 



by the simple to dyadov — the good. This expression, 
though not sufficiently expressed by translation, is 
preferable to to naXov, the beautiful, the excellent, the 
perfect. We have no word in the English language 
which will give exactly the same meaning. The 
German (but not the English) Ideal comes the near- 
est to it. Both to dyadov and to icaXov enter largely 
into the Grecian system of Philosophy, and have also 
formed the basis of the ^Esthetic philosophy, whose 
outlines Schiller was the first to conceive in modern 
times, and which, after him, Fichte, Hegel and Schel- 
ling amplified. The philosophic system of Plato is 
generally known as the Dialectic, on account of the 
conversational style in which it is carried on, as, for 
instance, the Phcedon and the Republic. It employs 
definitions, divisions, analyzations, and demonstra- 
tions as primary sciences in the investigation of 
causes, imitating the progression of beings from 
the first principle of things, and their continual con- 
version to it as the ultimate object of desire. This 
method is irreprehensible and most expeditious, for 
it is connate with things themselves, and employs a 
multitude of powers for the attainment of truth. It 
likewise imitates intellect from which it receives its 
principles and ascends through well-ordered grada- 
tions, to being itself. It also prevents the soul from 
being misled, since it explores, investigates, and 
demonstrates everything by methods which cannot 
be confuted, until, by this process, it arrives at the 
ineffable principle of things. Its energy is confined 
to the three following divisions : 
I. Apposite Arguments. 



98 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE METHODS 

2. Unfolding Truth. 

3. Confuting Falsehood. 

Aristotle differs from his master, Plato, in his re- 
jection of the Idealistic theory, and in assigning def- 
inite bounds to the powers of demonstration. In his 
last Analytic he lays down the maxim "that there 
must necessarily be principles of demonstration, and 
that these principles be undemonstrable." A thing 
which we cannot demonstrate, that is to say, which 
we cannot trace back to a prior cause, we can only 
assume or suppose, and Aristotle, therefore, implies 
that when science deals with first causes and princi- 
ples, it means that contemporary with the fact that 
such and such things exist, we assume, or make sup- 
positions why they exist. Aristotle's method was to 
collect facts from which he would draw his deduc- 
tions, while Plato, on the contrary, only used facts 
whenever they suited his purpose for either support- 
ing or demolishing a theory. While both systems 
have their advantages, it must be admitted that their 
thorough application was, in olden times, a matter 
of impossibility on account of the spirit of the age. 
In modern times, all schools of philosophy have 
borrowed largely from these two great masters. It 
would be carrying the reader too far, were I here to 
enter on an account of the various Greek schools of 
philosophy which succeeded those of Plato and of 
Aristotle, nor do we find many eminent names in 
this field of science after their time in Hellas. The 
internal struggles, as well as the wars with . Epirus, 
Macedonia, and Rome, were not favorable to its 
development, and though schools of philosophy 



OF ARISTOTLE AND PLATO. gg 

flourished at Athens, even as late as the reign of 
Julian, and scholars flocked to them from all parts 
of the Empire, they produced no thinker worthy to 
be compared with the three philosophers of whom I 
have just spoken. 



IOO ORIGIN OF TEE ETRURIANS. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

In speaking of the Roman theogony, I must at 
first revert to that of the Etruscans, but unfortunate- 
ly I can do so only in the briefest possible manner, 
for the simple reason, that with the works of art such 
as vases, mirrors, etc., which may be found scattered 
through the museums of Europe, or are yet occasion- 
ally met with on Italian soil, nothing reliable has 
come down to us of this singular nation. Though 
many of the Romans themselves were of Etruscan 
origin, and many customs were borrowed from the 
Etruscans, the conquerors of the world in the earlier 
period of their national existence were not solicitous 
to preserve either the history or the literature of the 
nations they had to contend with in Italy. Enough 
is known, however, both from Roman accounts and 
through the works of art I have mentioned, to es- 
tablish the fact, that the Etruscans must have been a 
civilized nation, possessing a well-ordered govern- 
ment long ere Romulus founded the Eternal City. 
The Etruscans must soon have come into close con- 
nection with the Romans, for the Tarquinian family 
we know, came from Etruria. The origin of the 
Etrurians is also involved in great doubt, but there 
is reason to suppose that the Pelasgian came first 
into Italy, that the Phoenicians probably afterwards 



TEE ETRUSCANS, P0LTTHE1STS. ioi 

founded some colonies there, and lastly, that the 
Celtic inhabitants of Gaul came after them. There 
is, indeed, no evidence extant whereby we could fix 
the period of the migration of the Celts to the West, 
but we know that 900 years before Christ the Gauls' 
under Brennus desolated Macedonia and Thessaly. 
It is, therefore, probable that France and Upper 
Italy became the home of the Celts at an early 
period afterwards, and that some colonies were sent 
by them to Central Italy, when they combined with 
the Pelasgians and Phoenicians and formed the 
Etruscan kingdom. Indeed, judging from some of 
the figures on the Etruscan polished mirrors, there 
seems to me but little doubt of the correctness of 
the hypothesis of their mixed origin. For while 
their alphabet, as seen by their inscriptions, is Semit- 
ic, the portraits on the mirrors are of the Aryan 
Celtic cast. The destruction of Troy by the Greeks 
may or may not have brought more people to 
Etruria. The story of iEneas is too mythical to 
place any reliance upon. At. all events it may be 
taken for granted, that when Rome was founded, the 
Etruscans were the most flourishing and the most 
civilized people inhabiting Central Italy, and that 
Romulus and his successors undoubtedly adopted 
more or less of their institutions. 

The Etruscans themselves probably borrowed 
their theogony from the different nations to whom 
they owed their origin. Their gods, — for they were 
polytheists — appear to have been divided into two 
classes, namely, first : hidden gods of which there is 
no number, and secondly : inferior gods, twelve in 



102 MYTHS OF EARLY ROMAN HISTORY. 

number ; corresponding with those of Hellas, at 
whose head stood Tinia (Jupiter). This, perhaps, 
shows better than anything else, that, as in other 
countries, the Etruscans had at first a monotheistic 
system, in course of time they multiplied their gods, 
adding hero-worship eventually, as their civilization 
progressed. The twelve lower gods were, no doubt, 
borrowed either from Greece itself, or more probably, 
from some of the Greek colonies in the southern part 
of the Italian peninsula. It is also more than probable, 
that in turn the Sabines, Umbrians, and other na- 
tionalities of Central Italy, borrowed largely from 
the Etruscan system long before the foundation of 
the Roman commonwealth. But as they subsequent- 
ly all became part and parcel of the great State as 
well as the Etruscans themselves, their earlier his- 
tory being of less importance, was lost in common 
with that of the Etruscans. Solely by the remnants 
of their works have the Etruscans preserved their 
place in the annals of history, and what little has 
come down to us, we owe to the archaeological zeal 
of a few men. 

The Romans themselves have interwoven so many 
legends and mythological tales into the history of 
their early days, that posterity has found it a hard 
task to separate the wheat from the chaff. There is 
so much of falsehood mixed up with the truth, that 
it has become almost a matter of impossibility to 
give a true version of the history of the greatest em- 
pire of ancient times. In order to judge correctly 
of the reasons which led to the foundation of Rome, 
and why the site on the Tiber was selected by its 



MARS, THE CHIEF GOD OF THE ROMANS. 103 

founders, we have to discard all the old fables, and 
take into account solely the advantages of its geo- 
graphical position. When we look at the map of 
Italy, we can very well perceive the reasons why the 
banks of the greatest river of the central part of the 
Peninsula should have been selected for the capital 
of the new State. Situated on the first high ground, 
not too far from the sea-coast, it had in its location 
great advantages. Besides, it must be taken into 
consideration that twenty-five hundred years ago, 
Rome must have been a great deal nearer to the 
Mediterranean than she is at present, for even in our 
times, the Tiber is adding yearly by deposits of al- 
luvium to the extent of its delta. Romulus, the re- 
puted founder of the city, no doubt expected that 
Rome would in course of time become a great sea- 
port, just as the founders of Washington imagined 
it would, when they selected the present site of 
the Federal city for the metropolis of the Ameri- 
can Republic. But Rome notwithstanding all its 
greatness never became a great sea-port, and for 
centuries its victories were won on land instead of 
at sea. 

In framing the institutions of the new common- 
wealth, Romulus and his successors borrowed large- 
ly, as I had occasion to remark above, from their 
neighbors, the Etruscans. Though they rejected the 
hidden gods, as a barbarous people naturally would, 
they adopted, as the chief deities, the twelve inferior 
ones worshipped in Etruria. But as war was the 
chief occupation of the citizens, they gave the first 
place to Mars, who was even held in higher repute 



104 



TEE ANCIENT ROMANS 



among the Romans than was Apollo among- the 
Greeks. The military service, indeed, was compul- 
sory on all burgesses, or citizens, whether of patrician 
or plebeian descent, and the maxim, patrice potestas, 
shows the power the State exercised over the in- 
dividual citizen, both in the field and at home. The 
theogony of the new State being based on the Etrus- 
can system, was largely polytheistic, but at the same 
time, the commonwealth was too jealous of priestly 
power to constitute its members into a separate caste. 
The priests were chosen from among the people. In 
the early days the Patricians monopolized all the offi- 
ces, but later the priesthood, as well as the civil service, 
was open to all citizens. The connection between 
Church and State was very close. The augurs ac- 
companied the armies in the field, and no general 
could undertake an important movement unless the 
augurs had divined success. The highest priestly 
office, that of Pontifex Maximus, was one eagerly 
sought for by the politicians during the Republic, 
and the Emperors at first reserved the post to them- 
selves. The name is yet preserved and borne by the 
bishops of Rome, who adopted it at the fall of the 
Western Empire, and are now known and spoken of 
as Supreme Pontiffs. 

A nation as barbarous as the old Romans must 
have been, whose austerity and simplicity of man- 
ners were the wonder and admiration of men, even 
at as late a period as the times of Pyrrhus, could not 
fail to be devout as well as superstitious. Their re- 
ligion being in early days simpler, less pantheistic 
and easier understood, than it became when after- 



DEVOUT AND SUPERSTITIOUS. 10 $ 

wards they extended their conquests abroad, and 
with each new acquisition augmented the number 
of their gods, pervaded all classes of the common- 
wealth, and produced thereby a singular and very 
lasting bond of unity. When, however, the Romans 
became masters of Carthage, of Greece, of Spain, 
and of Asia ; when riches and talents were thrown 
broadcast into the metropolis, then, though its tem- 
ples increased in numbers and were decked out in 
greater splendor, this ancient simplicity of worship 
attended by heartfelt devotion, was replaced by a 
multitude of imposing ceremonies which feasted the 
eye but left little impression on the soul. 



5* 



106 PROGRESS AMONG THE ROMANS. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

It is at this period, commencing about the time 
of the close of the second Punic war, that the great 
change in the religious condition of the Romans 
commenced. Wealth, as we have seen elsewhere, 
also here materially altered the condition of the 
people, and in Rome especially, it tended to create 
an upper class, even more opulent and able to en- 
joy leisure, than can be found in any other nation 
of antiquity. The gardens of Lucullus, the baths of 
Caracalla, and the villas of Latium, all are witnesses 
of the possession of great wealth by the upper classes 
of Rome, during the latter days of the Republic and 
under the Empire. It is from this period that we 
find the Hellenic philosophy exercising an important 
influence in undermining the Roman theogony. 
The young Romans who attended the schools of 
Athens and of Corinth, who read Socrates, Plato 
and Aristotle, were led to doubt and to reason. 
They naturally began to compare the dogmas of the 
State religion with the teachings of philosophy, and 
when they returned from the schools of Greece to 
their homes, they brought with them more correct 
conceptions of the truth, than they could have learn- 
ed at Rome. The gilded temples and the rich sanc- 
tuaries of the gods failed to offer the same attrac- 



THEIR INTELLECTUAL POVERTY. 



107 



tions which the more rude structures of the Republic 
were wont to present, and it was partly by the pro- 
tection of the State, and partly for the want of a bet- 
ter religious system, that the old Roman theogony 
survived so long a time as it did. 

But it was not in philosophy that the genius of the 
Roman people distinguished itself. Its schools were 
merely offshoots of those of Hellas. There is no im- 
portant metaphysical work left to us by the Romans. 
Indeed, with the exception of a few treatises by 
Cicero and others, such as, for instance, De Senectute 
and De Amicitia, there is no evidence extant that, 
until Seneca's day, philosophy was aught but an 
adaptation of the Grecian system. Seneca and the 
elder and the younger Pliny, were philosophical 
writers of eminence, but unfortunately most of their 
writings have perished, and of that which has come 
down to us and supposed to be their productions, it 
is by no means certain that they were the sole au- 
thors. Apparently it is strange that so great a nation 
as the Romans should have in so large a measure 
neglected the study of philosophy ; that during their 
long national existence there should not have arisen 
among this people a philosopher, the peer of Socra- 
tes, of Plato, and of Aristotle. The only reason for 
this intellectual poverty which I can assign, is the 
destruction of liberty. The three great philosophers 
of Greece all flourished in a small State, in a republic 
which had no king, no court to dispense patronage. 
Thales and Pythagoras lived in a republic ; Descar- 
tes and Bayle could not have propagated their doc- 
trines under the shadow of the Bastile. Rousseau 



108 EARLY ROMAN LITERATURE. 

and Voltaire wrote in opposition to the court. In 
fine, philosophy is a universal science which does not 
flourish under an exclusive system, such as a mon- 
archy always must be. 

Now the Romans from the time they began to 
amass wealth and to enjoy leisure, had always a 
master. Marius, Sylla, Pompey, Caesar, Antony 
and others, were all supreme in their day, even 
though they were not called emperors, as Augustus 
was named eventually. The men of learning, like 
all others wanting favors, flocked to their courts, and, 
in order to bask in the sunshine of the masters, sang 
their praises instead of cultivating science. Then, 
also, it ought to be remembered, that the wonderful 
history of the republic furnished an inexhaustive and 
more agreeable subject to literary men, and this fact 
alone accounts in a great measure for the large num- 
ber of historical works which appeared toward the 
close of the Republic, and under the Empire. Of 
these works we do not now possess even the one- 
tenth part, and yet enough remains to show the ex- 
traordinary activity of the Roman writers in this 
field of literature. We have in our own day an il- 
lustration of this attractiveness of history, in the 
number of books which have been written on the 
subject of the late rebellion in the Southern States, 
while the volumes written on the French Revolu- 
tion after the restoration of the Bourbons, would 
constitute a great library by themselves. 

Though the Romans did not distinguish them- 
selves in philosophical investigations, they contribut- 
ed in a large measure to the preservation of the 



ROMAN SUPERSTITION. 



109 



Grecian philosophy. Greek philosophers and teach- 
ers were sure to find patronage among the upper 
classes of Rome, and the works of the leading phi- 
losophical writers were transcribed in great numbers 
by the slaves and freedmen who abounded in the 
establishment of every Roman citizen of note. But 
after all, it was only the upper classes who enjoyed 
leisure and educational facilities. While the wealthy 
and powerful minority improved and advanced in 
civilization, the masses of the people, especially during 
the Empire, were left in hopeless ignorance, with no 
means of improving their condition. The super- 
stition engendered by the amplification of the poly- 
theistical system was looked upon by the govern- 
ment as necessary for its existence, and even the 
wisest of the emperors, as Trajan and the Antonines, 
persecuted their Christian subjects for reasons of 
state policy, rather than on account of any hostility 
they may have felt toward the new religion. The 
means of education among the lower classes of the 
Romans, seem to have been very limited, and the 
state seems to have been more solicitous to satisfy 
the masses with spectacles and feasts, than to pro- 
mote intelligence and industry. That this course of 
policy accelerated the downfall of the Empire, is 
well known, and need not be here dwelt upon. 



HO ORIGIN OF THE TEUTONS. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

The consideration of the religious system of the 
Teutonic race, though a highly interesting subject, 
is unfortunately obscured by the same veil of doubt 
and uncertainty, and encumbered by the same mass 
of legends and myths, as those other systems I have 
already described. The task of giving, therefore, 
even only a cursory review of it is one of extreme 
difficulty. A great deal has been written on the 
subject, especially by German writers, who, with 
commendable patience, have investigated and shed 
what light we have on the origin of the greatest race 
of Europe ; but there is a long period of time which 
will never be reached by investigation, namely, the 
time from their supposed migration from Asia to the 
western part of Europe. A wandering, nomadic race, 
with no fixed habitation, has no use for records or 
histories, and it is only by tradition or hypothesis 
that we can learn, or even assume, whence they came, 
or to what country they owe their origin. 

The Teutonic race, which at this day has overrun 
the greater portions of Europe, North America and 
Australia, which has founded the greatest empires 
of modern times, is of the pure Aryan stock. It is 
generally claimed that they came from the Caucasian 
mountains, a continuation of the Taurus, which, as I 



WHERE TEE ARYAN RAGE ORIGINATED, m 

liave shown above, divided the Aryan and Semitic 
races. Schlegel, Griscom and other writers claim 
that the Teutonic and Persian races formed originally 
one nation, and the analogy in the two languages, 
even at this day, is sufficiently striking to substan- 
tiate in a great degree the truth of this hypothesis. 
It is, at all events, certain that this great race origi- 
nated in the western part of Central Asia, but no 
fixed locality can be assigned for its origin. As the 
similarity between the Teutonic and Persian lan- 
guages is also in a great measure observable in the 
Sanscrit, it is not unlikely that the Aryan races origi- 
nated in the north of India, and that in their migra- 
tion westward they took very nearly the same route 
which Alexander took in his campaign against the 
Indies. If that be true, we may reasonably assume, 
that after leaving the Punjab, the Persians remained 
and founded their kingdom on the banks of the Eu- 
phrates, while their Teutonic brethren pressed on to 
the north-west, skirting the southern shore of the 
Caspian Sea, and entered Europe through the Cau- 
casian gates. It is improbable that the Teutonic 
race ever came as far west in Asia as the Hellespont, 
for the reason, that had such been the case, they 
would in all probability have remained in a country 
which, even in the earliest historic times, was fertile 
and rich beyond description. 

It is a matter of great regret that neither the Ger- 
man nor the Persian popular traditions have pre- 
served aught of this interesting portion of their his- 
tory, and what we know of their former condition 
rests upon similarities in language, in manners and in 



112 CJESAR AS A HISTORIAN. 

customs. These, indeed, are of the most marked 
character. The late Frederick Schlegel, in one of 
his lectures on Modern History, says, for instance, 
that— 

" The relationship between the Persian and Ger- 
man languages has been already often noticed by the 
learned, and a similar coincidence is also manifested 
in their respective constitutions. We perceive among 
the Persians the institution of the arriere ban, or levy 
in mass, of all freemen for military service, and a kind 
of feudalism, as well as a very clearly marked spirit 
of chivalry. Hence, agreement between the two na- 
tions in many parts of their worship ought not to 
surprise us." 

Julius Caesar is the first writer of importance who 
gives us an account of the Germanic or Teutonic 
race. Fully eight hundred, or even one thousand 
years must have elapsed from their departure from 
Asia, when Caesar first came into collision with them. 
They still had semi-nomadic customs, and were not 
scrupulous as to appropriating their neighbors' lands, 
for we find that the first campaign which Caesar 
made was against the Helvetians, who, persuaded by 
Orgetorix, had quitted their mountain homes and 
broken into Gaul. Throughout Caesar's Commen- 
taries a great deal of information is found, dispersed 
among other subjects, regarding German manners 
and customs, but the great general never seems to 
have had either time or inclination to study the his- 
tory and condition of this warlike but barbarous na- 
tion. His limited sojourn in Germany, and the 
scanty means he had of judging a great people, did 



TEE SWABIANS AND SAXONS. 



113 



not enable him to furnish his readers with a correct 
and reliable account of the German race. There is 
no doubt that Julius Caesar prevented the subjuga- 
tion of Gaul at that period by the Germans, since we 
find that besides the Helvetians, the Marcomanians 
under Ariovistus, the Belgas, the Suevi and other 
tribes were ready to cross the Rhine and occupy the 
country. Csesar's nine years' residence in Gaul de- 
layed the occupation of France by the Germans for 
three hundred years. 

Tacitus is the first and almost the only one of the 
Roman historians who has furnished posterity with 
a correct and connected narrative of the Teutonic 
nation. Even he had, however, only limited and 
scanty means of information, and could not have 
been able to attain a correct account of the extent of 
the then Teutonic Empire and the divisions of its peo- 
ple. Tacitus, therefore, only gives us an account of 
those German tribes which lived the nearest to the 
Roman frontier. There appear to me to have been 
two great divisions among the Germans, those of the 
South and those of the North. The former were 
called Swabians (Schwaben) and the latter Saxons. 
These again were divided into numerous sub-divi- 
sions, created by political and local necessities. Now 
we find the Swabians in Southern and Central Ger- 
many, even in the days of Julius Caesar, while as late 
a writer as Tacitus does not even mention the Sax- 
ons, and therefore the supposition holds good, that 
even in the time of Tacitus they had not yet come 
south from Jutland, Mecklenburg, Pomerania and 
what is now East and West Prussia. These two 



ii4 



MYTHOLOGY OF THE GERMANS. 



German nations appear also to have had separate 
theogonies. The chief deity of those Germans with 
whom Tacitus became acquainted, was called Tnisto, 
whom Leibnitz supposes to be Tent, from which, no 
doubt, the word Dentsch originated, and which after- 
wards became the national designation for the col- 
lective tribes. The second god described by Taci- 
tus, Mannus, is clearly the old word man, or mon, 
which denoted an inferior or vassal, thus showing 
that Teut was regarded as the Supreme Being, while 
afterwards Man, or Mon, was associated with him, 
though in an inferior position. 

On the other hand the Saxons, or the northern 
portion of the Teutonic nation, venerated as their 
chief deity a god whom they called Odin or Woden. 
On the same principle that the old word Wehrman 
was afterwards changed into German, we may rea- 
sonably suppose that this Woden was changed into 
Goden, which in its turn was, in course of time, ab- 
breviated into God. The female character of Fraya y 
which appears so conspicuously in the North Ger- 
man and Scandinavian mythology, is not mentioned 
by Tacitus, and probably the Southern Germans had 
no female deities. The two races of Swabians and 
Saxons do not seem to have become united until 
Charlemagne had conquered the great Saxon Duke 
Wittekind. Of the old mythology of Germany, and 
of the Teutonic race generally, we have tolerably 
correct accounts through the Niebelungen Lieder 
and other songs which Tacitus speaks of as being the 
only records or annals of the country. That the poly- 
theism which gradually enlarged itself in the sys- 



GERMAN CONTEMPT FOR PRIESTCRAFT. 115 

terns, both of the South and of the North, and was 
augmented by Kobolds, elves, sprites (geister) and 
dwarfs, never took deep root among the Germanic 
tribes, must be solely ascribed to the want of a regu- 
larly organized priesthood, whose interest it would 
have been to preserve and impress the system upon 
the people, and this seeming neglectfulness of spirit-, 
ual worship did not fail to be observed by those who 
came in contact with the Germans. Cassar, in his 
Commentaries, remarks upon the fact that the Ger- 
mans, unlike the Gauls, had no Druids, and it is a 
characteristic trait of the German national character, 
even at this day, that the clergy are not held in high 
repute among the majority of the people. More in- 
vectives have been launched against das Pfaffenthum 
in Germany than in any other country, and the word 
Pfaffe itself, so untranslatable, is as expressive, as a 
contemptuous designation of ecclesiastics, as the term 
knave is in English for a well-trained rogue. That 
such a people should have originated the Reforma- 
tion, that it should yet seek for a higher standard of 
excellence, and therefore be foremost in the philo- 
sophical field, need excite no wonder. But of this 
we shall speak hereafter. 

At the time they first appear prominently in his- 
tory, they were as yet rude and uncultivated. They 
had no literature, simply because they had no wealth, 
and their polytheistic system had no abiding-place 
in temples or pagodas, because architecture was with 
them an unknown science. The primitive groves 
served as places of worship, and the civil and mili- 
tary leaders mostly fulfilled the priestly functions. 



Il6 TEMPORARY DECLINE OF LITERATURE. 

As long as the Germans dwelt in their rude county, 
there was no danger of their changing their simpler 
though ruder creed. When they finally appeared as 
conquerors and masters before the walls of Rome, 
the old paganism of Italy had been swept away by 
Christianity. The adoption of the new religion by 
the conquerors of the old Empire followed as a mat- 
ter of necessity ; being urged upon the leaders some- 
times as a matter of state policy, and also, we hope, 
through a perception of the truth. The temporary 
decline of literature which followed and continued 
through the Middle Ages, even after the conversion 
of the ruling Teutonic race, was owing to the great 
and continuous wars, and to the growing power of 
the ecclesiastical order. This brings us to the con- 
sideration of the two monotheistic systems of Juda- 
ism and Christianity, a careful study of which is es- 
sential to the perception of the present state of phi- 
losophy. 



THE HEBREW THEOQONY. 



117 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

Concerning the Hebrew theogony we have abun- 
dant materials on hand for research and inquiry, the 
principal ones being the Bible, the Talmud, and 
other Scriptural commentaries, and the minor ones, 
the inscriptions, coins, and the other archaeological 
remains which have been preserved to us. The 
ground has been thoroughly reviewed for the last 
fifteen or sixteen hundred years, and the discus- 
sions and divergencies have been without limit. 
Almost at the threshold we find, even at this day, 
two schools in opposition to each other. First, the 
one which implicitly follows the Biblical accounts, 
which believes everything recorded therein as liter- 
ally true, and which brands all who differ from them 
in this belief, all doubters, all skeptics as unorthodox, 
heretical, etc. The second class believes more or 
less in the Biblical accounts, in proportion to the 
profoundness of investigation to which its members 
have arrived. This class embraces not only the dif- 
ferent philosophical schools, but also the dissentient 
Jewish and Christian sects. It would carry me too 
far, were I to enter upon a discussion or even a re- 
lation of Biblical criticism, and therefore I prefer to 
give only in brief, the historical facts as they appear 
to be substantiated by evidence and reason. 



Il8 ISOLATION OF THE HEBREWS. 

I have already stated that when the Patriarch 
Abraham visited the land of Mizraim, or Egypt, he 
found that country already in a high state of civili- 
zation, possessed of an organized government, with a 
king at its head, well-established institutions, civil, 
military, and religious, its agriculture being espe- 
cially in a flourishing condition. His grandson, Jacob, 
who, according to the Bible, went to Egypt two 
hundred years later, (though the interval was prob- 
ably less than half that number of years,) found his 
son Joseph there as Prime Minister. Fourteen hun- 
dred years, according to Bunsen, one oi the greatest 
of Biblical scholars, the Jews or Hebrews continued 
to dwell in Egypt, and at the time of the exodus, ac- 
cording to the Scriptural account, they had increased 
to 600,000 male adults, equal to three million of 
souls. Their social condition in Egypt must, during 
the latter period of their residence in that country, 
have been extremely irksome. Most probably they 
were, like the fellahs of the present day, compelled 
to work on the public buildings, the canals, and even 
to cultivate the crown lands. The yoke wh^ch 
rested upon them, and the persecutions which they 
no doubt suffered, led to the desire for emigration 
en masse, and it perhaps required but little per- 
suasion on the part of Moses,' their self-chosen lead- 
er, to induce them to carry this plan into execution 
And here I must revert to a remarkable trait in the 
national character, which we see in operation even 
at this day, namely, their isolation in the midst of the 
world, their living in and constituting separate commu- 
nities, even while dispersed over the earth among other 



THEIR UNION AMONG THEMSELVES. 



1I 9 



nations. Even in the earliest days of their existence, 
they did not readily mingle with any other people, 
but chose to preserve, throughout their history, the 
individuality of their race. A great deal of this 
singular conduct must be explained by inquiring into 
the character of the founders of the nation. There 
is no doubt that the three patriarchs were men pos- 
sessed not alone of great virtue, but also of great 
sagacity and wisdom. We can readily imagine 
that men of superior understanding like Abraham, 
Isaac, and Jacob, became disgusted while living in 
Canaan and Mizraim, with the idolatry and poly- 
theism with which they were surrounded. Still, the 
possession of wealth — for they had herds in abun- 
dance — made them naturally prudent and thought- 
ful. They do not seem to have been willing to en- 
counter the opposition which it is the fate of all re- 
formers to encounter, nor did they possess the pow- 
er needed, had they wished to effect a reformation 
by force. Being few in number, and naturally not 
wishing to endanger their wealth, they remained quiet. 
But at the same time they urged upon their descend- 
ants and followers the necessity of a close union 
among themselves, if they wished, in the first place, 
to preserve their wealth, which must have been con- 
siderable, and in the second place, if they did not 
wish to become degraded and polluted by the poly- 
theism of the pagan nations among whom they lived. 
Though no mention is made in the Bible of any lead- 
er in Israel, from the time of Joseph's death till the 
assumption of power by Moses, it must be assumed 
that the Hebrews had, while living among the 



120 THE EXODUS FROM EGYPT 

Egyptians, a government of their own ; but of the 
character of this government, whether it was in the 
Patriarchal form or otherwise, we have no means of 
knowing. Still it must be presumed that there ex- 
isted a central authority, a rallying point of the 
young nation, for without such an institution it 
would have been impossible for the descendants of 
Abraham to preserve their nationality intact for so 
many centuries. The presence of so large a body 
of men preserving a distinct national organization 
and having customs and manners different from the 
rest of the people, must necessarily have been a 
source not only of annoyance, but even of great 
anxiety, to such despotic rulers as the Egyptian 
Pharaohs were. These monarchs must have stood 
in continual dread of the growing power of the 
" Hebrew " strangers, and the fear of an eventual 
overthrow of their dynasty must have been well 
founded. What the Ethiopians had done in former 
times, it was not unnatural to suppose the Hebrews 
might do, if not subjugated. The priesthood, also, 
which was all-powerful, may have looked with sus- 
picion on men who did not conform to the establish- 
ed religion of the country, and they no doubt urged 
upon the king and his advisers the necessity of ener- 
getic measures to check the power of the strangers, 
and when these measures of persecution failed, to 
consent to their removal from the country. Regard- 
ing the expulsion or exodus of the Hebrews from 
Egypt, we have only the Scriptural record to guide 
us, and how much of truth there is mixed in the nar- 
rative with legend and fable, it is impossible to de- 



MOSES. 121 

termine at this day. On the supposition, however, 
that their existence as a separate nation in Egypt 
was looked upon as dangerous to the safety of the 
state, I am led to the conclusion that the Egyptian 
authorities readily consented to their emigration, 
and that Pharaoh's pursuit of them and the subse- 
quent destruction of his army in the Red Sea, or 
near its shores, is as mythical as the accounts of the 
Roman historians of the early history of the great 
commonwealth are now known to be. 

The great mind which managed and superintended 
this hazardous task of leading a whole nation from 
its ancient homes in search of new ones, was that of 
Moses, who according to all the accounts which have 
come down to us, must have been as wise a ruler 
and statesman as has ever wielded power in historic 
times. His task must have been one of extreme 
difficulty and hardship, for the Hebrews — numerous 
and powerful as they were at the time of their leav- 
ing Egypt — had barely yet emerged from barbarism. 
From the nature of the chief occupation of the na- 
tion in tending their flocks, which constituted their 
greatest source of wealth, we must presume that 
while in Egypt the majority led a semi-nomadic life, 
and that they did not devote their time to agricul- 
ture. Such a people naturally can have but a limit- 
ed acquaintance with letters, and could have kept 
no written records of their previous history. Still, 
the origin of the nation and of its heroes, was pre- 
served through the traditions of the people, but these 
traditions were, like others, mixed up with fables 
and legends, which were readily believed and even 
6 



122 MOSES'S QUALIFICATIONS FOR HIS WORK. 

afterwards augmented, by a superstitious people. 
Whether Moses was an enthusiast and believed him- 
self to have received a mission from God, or wheth- 
er he invented the story to strengthen his authority, 
we cannot now determine. But that he was emi- 
nently fitted for the post he assumed, cannot be 
denied. 

All accounts are agreed that Moses himself was 
brought up at the royal court of the Egyptian king, 
under the protection of Pharaoh's daughter, and that 
he received his education at the hands of the Egyp- 
tian priests. The minute account given in the Bible 
of his killing an Egyptian overseer for maltreating a 
Hebrew, and his subsequent flight to avoid the visit- 
ations of the law, show us not alone the forced labor 
system prevalent in Egypt, but also the existence of 
regular courts of justice. Taking refuge with Jethro, 
a Midianite chief, he escaped persecution, and, as he 
married Jethro's daughter, he perhaps would have 
lived and died there, if, as is not improbable, he had 
not been recalled by his countrymen into Egypt. 
They most naturally looked for a leader when Pha- 
raoh's yoke became at last too hard to be borne. At 
all events, Moses's stay in Midian was of long dura- 
tion, and he, during that time, acquired an accurate 
topographical knowledge of .the Arabian Desert and 
of the surrounding country. It is expressly record- 
ed, that while tending the flocks of his father-in-law, 
he went as far as Mount Horeb, or Sinai, and this 
region seems to have been a favorite resort of the 
great Hebrew legislator ever afterwards. It is here 
where we find him making his first grand halt, 



HEBREWS IN THE DESERT. 



123 



where, when sufficiently distant from Egypt, he 
could exercise his authority without fear, and where, 
consequently, he makes the formal and solemn an- 
nouncement of his mission to his countrymen. 
Whether Moses had selected Palestine originally as 
the future home of his people^ is doubtful, from the 
fact that he could by a shorter route have reached 
that country. He perhaps may have wished to 
go further south into Arabia, a comparatively un- 
known, but highly extolled land, and may have been 
prevented by the rebellious spirit of the Hebrews 
from executing this purpose. Certainly no general 
would allow the enthusiasm of his soldiers to cool 
by marches of great hardship, and the Hebrews, 
when they left Egypt, were sufficiently numerous to 
overpower the inhabitants of Palestine. 

The residence in the Desert is said by the Bible to 
have lasted forty years, yet the record of the events 
of two years only is given. It must have occupied 
far less time, and the best authorities now limit the 
wanderings to no more than ten years, and even a 
less number. But Moses himself did not witness the 
triumph of his people. The great labor he had un- 
dertaken must have hastened his death, compelling 
him to leave to others the completion of the great 
work he had begun. 



124 



TEE INFLUENCE OF MOSES. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

The influence which Moses exercised over the 
Hebrews was undoubtedly great. The high posi- 
tion he' occupied at the Egyptian court in his youth, 
may have laid the foundation for it, but his talents 
and his high moral character contributed mostly to 
his maintaining this ascendancy till his death. In- 
deed, there are few, if any historic portraits, which 
shine with greater lustre and over which I love to 
linger longer in admiration, than on that of Moses. 
Uniting with unusual accomplishments, a rare phi- 
lanthropy, we see him cast aside a life of ease, luxury, 
and power, for the thankless office of leadership of 
his oppressed countrymen. The task was as hazard- 
ous as it was ill-requited. How often is it recorded, 
for instance, that the children of Israel murmured, 
that they were rebellious ! By firmness which, how- 
ever, was not always accompanied by gentle means, 
the great leader overcame all opposition to his au- 
thority. But severity occasionally became necessary 
for self-preservation, as well as for the preservation 
of the nation, and if we compare the subsequent ca- 
reer of Mohammed in dealing with a people as bar- 
barous as the Hebrews, the immeasurable superiority 
of Moses becomes apparent to every candid mind. 
The code of laws which he has left behind him is 



HEBREW MONOTHEISM. i2 $ 

one of the greatest monuments of human wisdom. 
These laws are the glory of intellect, and it is no 
wonder that even at this day there should be mil- 
lions of men who believe that they emanated direct- 
ly from the Supreme Being-. 

It is no easy task to determine how much of the 
law was transmitted by the Patriarchs, how much 
Moses gave himself, and what parts were added by 
the prophets and priests after his time. It is safe to 
assert, however, that we owe to him the ten com- 
mandments. Few and simple as they are, they form 
the groundwork, the foundation, of the Hebrew, the 
Christian, and the Mohammedan religions. They 
are, in short, the basis of monotheism. What is more 
simple, and yet more explicit, than the following ? 

"■ Thou shalt have no other god before me." 

" Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven im- 
age, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven 
above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in 
the water under the earth." 

" Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor 
serve them." 

I would ask the reader if this is not monotheism 
pure and simple, and though Moses makes the Su- 
preme Being speak here himself, it must be borne 
in mind that it was probably done in order to im- 
press his countrymen with the importance of the 
commandments. The great leader's authority would 
have been seriously weakened had he simply told 
the children of Israel that it was himself who made 
these laws, for the Hebrews were not at all times 
ready to acknowledge his authority. This was the 



126 AARON' 8 WEAKNESS. 

reason probably why Moses in giving his laws to the 
Hebrews places himself in the attitude of an inter- 
mediary between the Supreme Being and the nation ; 
that he invariably begins his laws with the explana- 
tion, " The Lord spake unto Moses." 

Nor was his position as leader the only source of 
trouble to Moses. According to the accounts in the 
Bible, his relations with his own family were not at 
all times harmonious. While he advanced the for- 
tunes of his brother Aaron and of his sister Miriam, 
to the exclusion of his own children, both the brother 
and sister seem to have been envious of the great 
legislator, and it is recorded in the twelfth chapter 
of the book of Numbers that Miriam and Aaron 
" spoke against Moses." Aaron, also, does not ap- 
pear in the best light while acting as leader during 
the absence of Moses on Horeb. Though being ele- 
vated by his brother to the high-priesthood of a pure 
religion, he himself appears as the destroyer of the 
faith, by making the golden calf and performing a 
grossly idolatrous worship, in which he compelled 
the people to "go naked unto their shame." He ap- 
pears to have been a weak, vain man, and the account, 
as related in the Bible, of his deposition before his 
death, leads me to the belief that Moses was compel- 
led by the high-priest's misconduct to confer the dig- 
nity on the son Eleazar. In no other way can the 
passage in Numbers, chapter xx., be satisfactorily ex- 
plained, that " Moses stripped Aaron of his garments 
(his priestly robes) and put them on Eleazar, Aaron's 
son." 

A much more pleasing picture is that of Jethro, 



CRITICISM OF MOSES AND HIS LAWS. 127 

the father-in-law of Moses. The Midianite chieftain 
seems to have 'been a steadfast friend and a wise 
counsellor. It is due to his suggestion, that Moses 
instituted law-courts among his people. The death 
of Moses himself is brief! v recorded in the latter end 
of the Pentateuch. Like the cases of Alaric and of 
Attila, his place of sepulchre was kept a secret from 
all. He died full of years and honors, but the ful- 
fillment of his plans was not vouchsafed to him to 
witness. Standing on the hills of Moab, he could 
see the valley of the Jordan decked out in all its 
glory, ere his soul fled to his Maker, but it was left 
to Joshua, his successor, chosen by himself, to lead 
the descendants of Abraham into what they called 
their promised land. 

Wise and just as the majority of the laws of Moses 
undoubtedly were, his system was faulty princi- 
pally in his regulation of the priesthood. The caste 
which he wished to introduce among the nation, ac- 
cording to the Egyptian model, was distasteful to a 
people who, in order to be free, had left their homes, 
and who were not willing to see a new set of masters 
set over them. Moreover, the enormous tax which 
Moses laid upon the people, the one-tenth of all the 
produce, for the support of this priesthood, must have 
met with great opposition, on account of its oppres- 
sive nature. Furthermore, neither Aaron nor his 
descendants were men of great ability. The high- 
priests became in a short time, notwithstanding their 
high position, the weakest men in the land, and the 
model theocracy which Moses had contemplated, 
was never realized. Moses himself must have be- 



128 THE HEBREWS A MIGRATORY PEOPLE. 

come aware of this ere his death, else he would never 
have chosen Joshua, a man who did not belong to 
the priestly tribe, to become his successor, instead of 
one of his own sons, or the son of his brother Aaron, 
the high-priest Eleazar. The priests themselves do 
not appear to have been much impressed with the 
importance of their holy calling, and instances of 
bad priests are by no means rare in the Bible. Thus 
we see the sons of Eli, the high-priest mentioned in 
Samuel, as " the sons of Belial, who knew not the 
Lord." Still later, in the days of king Hezekiah, 
the priesthood must have been in a lamentable state, 
for it is mentioned both in " Chronicles " and in 
" Kings," that many of the priests were not sanctified. 
The people were not slow to profit by this bad con- 
duct of their priests and to make it an excuse for not 
paying their tithes, and the kings frequently had to 
issue edicts and mandates, to compel the people to 
support the clergy. 

This habitual neglect of the ecclesiastical order by 
the Hebrews was owing mainly to the migratory 
habits of the people at the time, and after the insti- 
tution of the laws. While the Egyptians, Phoeni- 
cians and Hindoos had fixed habitations, and the tax- 
gatherers could easily find each man, the Hebrews 
having no country at first, and leading a nomadic 
life, could more easily evade the payment of the 
taxes imposed by their national code. Their wealth 
being in herds, could not be so clearly ascertained 
as that of a people whose principal occupation was 
the cultivation of the soil. In later years, likewise, 
many of the kings must have looked with jealous 



PAGANISM AMONG THE HEBREWS. 



129 



eyes on the enormous revenues of the church, and 
therefore were not always anxious to compel their 
collection. It was only, perhaps, when they needed 
the services of the church, that they exerted their 
authority for its benefit. All these causes naturally 
tended to weaken the influence of the priests and 
Levites, and led to the institution of a more benefi- 
cial ecclesiastic order, that of the Rabbis, whose 
numbers being confined to no particular family or 
tribe, were more identified with the people, and ex- 
erted a correspondingly greater influence. 

The neglect of the priesthood by the people, how- 
ever, had its evil as well as beneficial results. After 
the Hebrews had made themselves masters of Pales- 
tine, and parceled its territories out among the tribes, 
a great portion of the nation — especially in those sec- 
tions where the old inhabitants had been suffered to 
remain, and in those which were contiguous to other 
countries — began to drift slowly, and at first imper- 
ceptibly, into paganism, till at last, after Solomon's 
time, idolatry boldly contended for supremacy with 
monotheism. The proximity of the polytheistic Phoe- 
nicians, especially, must have exerted a great influence 
over the Hebrews. Naturally the rude inhabitants 
of the interior must have looked with astonishment 
and admiration upon the beautiful temples which 
adorned Sidon and Tyre, and of which as old an au- 
thor as Herodotus speaks with enthusiastic fervor. 
The remembrance of Egypt and the connection 
which the Hebrews still kept up with that country, 
must also have been of considerable influence upon 
the religious as well as upon the social and political 
6* 



13° 



ABSENCE OF SECULAR LITERATURE. 



life of the people. Finally there was, except in the 
days of David and Solomon, a want of a strong cen- 
tral authority. We look in vain, except under the 
reign of those two monarchs, for anything like na- 
tional unity, and the subsequent disruption of the 
kingdom and the establishment of Judah in the south, 
and of Israel in the north, divided the clergy as well 
as the rest of the nation. The northern portion 
plunged headlong into polytheism, while the south, 
having Jerusalem and its temple as a rallying point, 
clung to the monotheistic system and the Mosaic 
law. 

The schools of the prophets, the predecessors of the 
Rabbis, are mentioned as early as the days of Saul, 
and it is out of those schools most probably that 
Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah and other prophets came. 
The literature of the people was of a purely ecclesi- 
astical character, as, for instance, we see to-day in 
the schools of the East that the Koran is almost the 
sole study. We find no traces of secular literature, or 
at least no remains of any have come down to us, 
and so little was this kind of study thought of, that 
the Mishna mentions, as one of the good deeds of 
king Hezekiah, that he hid (suppressed ?) a book of 
medicaments. The Semitic race generally has shown 
but little attention to secular education, and what 
•literary activity they have exerted has been expend- 
ed mostly upon religious subjects. It is for this rea- 
son, perhaps, that nothing, save the laws and Scrip- 
tural accounts have come down to us, and the proph- 
ets, who were the teachers of the people, in their 
anxiety to preserve the laws of Moses, looked with 



THE TALMUD, MISHNA, ETC. 131 

distrust upon the cultivation ,of secular literature, 
and especially of philosophy. It was not till the dis- 
persion of the Jews and the final destruction of their 
capital, that they began the cultivation of letters and 
sent forth that great array of writers which has 
sprung from that people, without intermission, from 
the time of Philo and Josephus to the present day. 

Of the later theological productions of the He- 
brews ; of the Talmud, the Mishna and other works, 
it would require a volume by itself to do justice. 
Their influence on the national character of the He- 
brews was even greater than the law of Moses itself. 
These remarkable books, while enlarging and com- 
menting upon the original laws, eventually took their 
place. To their influence is due the perpetuation 
of the isolated condition which has characterized the 
Hebrews in their dispersion all over the world. The 
persecution which they experienced wheresoever 
they went, tended more to the preservation of the old 
creed than the independence and the homes which 
had been theirs in Palestine. The old law, so long 
neglected, now formed a bond of union so strong that 
it withstood all the assaults and persecutions of suc- 
ceeding ages. In fact the Hebrews only began to 
experience and appreciate the superiority of mono- 
theism, when they were driven out of their coun- 
try and forced to live among the polytheistic na- 
tions. 

The writers of the Talmud are also greatly supe- 
rior to their predecessors, the prophets, thus show- 
ing the advance of civilization. The names of Gama- 
liel, of Hillol, of Jehudah-ha-Nasi, and of Philo, claim 



132 



WEAKENING OF NATIONAL TIES 



a place in the history of philosophy, and their say- 
ings in works like the Pirke Aboth, the Mishna, and 
Gemara, show a greatly extended range of thought. 
I will only quote the following from the Pirke Aboth, 
which is at once a philosophical maxim and an ec- 
clesiastical dogma : 

" Which is the right way that a man should walk 
in ? That which glorifies the Creator and gains for 
him the esteem of men." 

The dispersion of the Hebrews essentially changed 
their mode of worship in a beneficial degree. The 
old sacrifices were abolished, and in their place 
prayers and deeds of benevolence or charity were 
substituted. Christianity, in its primitive age, still 
more simplified this worship, and the Reformation 
subsequently arose from a desire to abolish the many 
cumbrous ceremonies with which the priests had 
burdened the mode of worship. We find the same 
ceremonial incubus in Hebrew worship of later days, 
and it is only as civilization progressed, as toleration 
and liberty of conscience were extended to all men 
that the Hebrews emancipated themselves from the 
greater part of this dumb show of ceremony, that 
philosophy progressed and prospered among them, 
and that the monotheistic system of Moses was made 
to conform to the spirit of the age. The singular 
tie of nationality which has preserved them as com- 
munities, even while dispersed all over the world, is, 
at the same time, growing gradually weaker. There 
may be, perhaps, no longer any desire for a return to 
Zion, nor is it any longer possible that such a scheme 
could be realized. At all events, the Hebrews may 



AMONG THE HEBREWS. 133 

be said to be happier in their adopted homes, where 
freedom of conscience and equality before the law 
prevail, than their ancestors ever could have been 
in the so-called Holy Land. 



*34 



TEE CHRISTIAN RELIGION 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

It remains for me to speak of the Christian reli- 
gion ere I close the second part of this book, and I 
can only do so in the briefest possible manner, leav- 
ing necessarily a great deal unsaid, and allowing 
myself only to touch upon the main facts of its his- 
tory and its connection with philosophy. The ques- 
tion " What is Christianity ?" at first suggests itself 
to the mind, and it is a question more easily asked 
than answered. For, as we shall see hereafter, 
Christianity is essentially different at this day from 
what it was at the time of its foundation, or from 
what it was ten or even five centuries ago. There 
is no other religion which has so easily accommo- 
dated itself to the spirit of the times, and has endeav- 
ored to keep step with the progress of the age. 
Again, though it is the faith of the majority of the 
civilized nations of the earth, there can be found no 
creed which has so many different subdivisions or 
sects, each of which, naturally enough claims for it- 
self the merit of having the purest and most perfect 
type of Christianity in its dogma, and in most cases 
looks upon the adherents of other sects as heretics 
and unbelievers. But of this I shall have occasion to 
speak hereafter. At present I must touch briefly 
upon the origin and the history of this faith. 



ITS ORIGIN AND HISTORY. 135 

Nearly nineteen hundred years ago there reigned 
in Palestine, or as it was then called, Judaga, Herod 
the . Great, descended from an Idumsean family, 
which by superior talents and by cultivating the 
friendship of the Roman people, had supplanted the 
Asmonean dynasty, the last native rulers of the He- 
brews. The power and independence which the 
Hebrews had acquired under the earlier Asmoneans, 
had been weakened and finally lost, through the dis- 
sensions among the members of the Asmonean fam- 
ily, which were taken advantage of by the Romans. 
The Hebrews, also, paid less attention to their poli- 
tical affairs than to the contentions between two 
theological factions which have become celebrated 
in history — those of the Pharisees and the Saddu- 
cees. As in other cases similar to it, the strife be- 
tween the two religious schools increased from day 
to day in bitterness ; it entered into the social and 
political life of the people and divided the nation 
eventually into two hostile camps. The struggle 
survived the ruin of the nation, which it brought 
about, and has never been thoroughly given up. It 
was only mutual exhaustion and separation from 
each other, that brought about something like a 
truce between the contending factions. At the time 
of Herod, while the quarrel was at its highest point, 
there were enough moderate men who would not 
take sides with either of the parties, but who were, 
ready to adopt a creed which disclaimed all connec- 
tion with either Pharisees or Sadduces. 

Another important point which materially aided 
the introduction of the new faith in. Palestine, was 



1 36 EARLY LIFE OF CHRIST. 

the universal belief of the coming of a Messiah, who 
should once more lead Israel out of bondage ; and 
St. John the Baptist, as well as others who were re- 
garded then as prophets, were never weary of talk- 
ing about the coming of the Messiah. The Book of 
Daniel (by whomsoever it may have been written) 
fully embodies the Messiah idea as then current 
among the people. It was at the time of great poli- 
tical degradation, then, of his countrymen, as well as 
a longing for deliverance, that Jesus was born at 
Nazareth. Of his childhood so much is interwoven 
with legends and fables as to make it altogether im- 
possible that the world should ever have a correct 
account of the early days of the great law-giver. 
We may take it for granted, however, that Jesus was 
at an early age attending the religious schools which 
at that time had the monopoly of instructing the 
youth of the country, and that he diligently availed 
himself of the means, scanty as they were, for im- 
provement. The traits of peace and good-will to all 
men which are so eminent in the character of Jesus, 
developed themselves more fully by witnessing the 
degrading character which the religious strife was 
beginning to assume ; and Jesus not unnaturally 
sketched out for himself an independent course of 
action, which, while it enjoined an adherence to the 
laws of Moses, also condemned the suicidal quarrels 
of the theologians as destructive of the doctrine of 
brotherly love. Such a course, and the boldness 
with which Jesus gave expression to his feelings, not 
unnaturally must have given great offence to parti- 
zans heated with passion, and the result was that 



THE SEEM ON ON THE MOUNT. 



137 



Jesus had to flee for safety, and to lead, with what 
few disciples he could gather, a rather secluded life 
among the hills of Galilee. On this point, the " Life 
of Jesus" by Renan is one of the most masterly ex- 
positions extant, and though I may not be able to 
concur in all his views, I cannot forbear to express 
my admiration of the talent, sincerity, and modera- 
tion displayed by the author in the composition of 
this famous work. 

Throughout his life Jesus was animated by the 
purest motives, and his heart was fired by religious 
enthusiasm. What religious enthusiasm means in 
the East, what sacrifices, ordeals and penances men 
imbued with it will undergo, we have in the West 
but a faint conception, though we have living in- 
stances without number of this spiritual exaltation in 
Hindoo life. Jesus himself, in his later days, when 
he was thoroughly absorbed in his work, may have 
become convinced that the work he was engaged in, 
was a mission entrusted to him by God, but as he 
left no writings behind, and as we have to rely upon 
his disciples, and, in many cases, even upon men who 
lived two hundred years later, for all the accounts of 
his life, his death, and his teachings, it is difficult to 
say whether Jesus ever claimed for himself a divine 
origin. Certainly in the Sermon on the Mount, which 
undoubtedly is genuine, he never assumes to be the 
son of the Supreme Being in any higher or closer 
degree than any other mortal man may. The books 
of the New, as well as of the Old Testament, have 
suffered so much by interpolations, omissions, and 
other falsifications, that their claims to authenticity 



138 JESUS CLAIMS NO DIVINE ORIGIN 

have been seriously impaired — more especially in 
late years — when older manuscript copies have come 
to light in the cloisters of the East, which vary in 
essential particulars from the versions of the Bible 
now in common use. The Sermon on the Mount, 
however, by singular good fortune has come down 
to us in almost its original state, and the only ques- 
tion regarding it is, whether it was actually deliver- 
ed at one time, or rather, judging from the disjointed 
character of its sentences, its parts were collected 
together after the death of Jesus. This, however, 
does not affect its value as a brief and concise expo- 
sition of the doctrines of Christianity. In this cata- 
logue of the articles of faith, we would not unnatu- 
rally look also for a statement of the authority by 
virtue of which Jesus offered them to his country- 
men. But he does not claim here any divine origin, 
nor does he allude to a mission from God. He sim- 
ply represents himself in his character of Reformer 
and enjoins certain duties upon his followers. He 
says emphatically r 

" Think not that I am come to destroy the law or 
the prophets ; I am not come to destroy but to ful- 
611." 

It is plain from this and the succeeding sentences, 
that Jesus himself accepted and was a believer in the 
monotheistic system of Moses. But he went further. 
While Moses had separated and isolated the Hebrews 
from the world, Jesus meant to lead the world to the 
Hebrews. His love for mankind was larger than his 
love of country, and the new faith planted itself on 
the doctrine of brotherly love. The career of Jesus 



PROGRESS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 



1 39 



as a preacher or prophet, was only a short-lived one. 
Like Socrates in Athens, he was accused by his op- 
ponents of impiety, and being betrayed and cast into 
prison, was summarily condemned by an ecclesiasti- 
cal court and executed. 

Silently and slowly did the new sect increase 
after the Master's death, in spite of persecutions at 
the hands of secular and ecclesiastical authorities. 
Among the Jews it made but little progress, as their 
own quarrels, political as well as religious, fully ab- 
sorbed their attention, so that but few deigned to 
investigate the merits of the new faith. But when 
the Apostles went to Rome, to Athens, to Corinth 
and to the cities of Asia Minor, as, for instance, An- 
tioch and Ephesus, they found a field ready for the 
seed. The old paganism, though supported by the 
State, was effete and ready to die, while the philo- 
sophical schools were too exclusive to be greatly 
patronized by any but the wealthy. They had but 
a slight hold upon popular affection, and were there- 
fore not able to exert any large influence over the 
people. When, therefore, the Apostles appeared in 
the cities of the Roman Empire, as the teachers of a 
new and purer religion, they found men and women 
earnest enough to give heed to lessons of truth, in 
all classes of the community, but especially among 
the poor people. 



140 



DOCTRINE OF- THE TRINITY. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

The charming simplicity of the worship of ancient 
Christianity no doubt contributed greatly to the 
adoption of the faith by men who were disgusted 
with the barbarous and oftentimes immoral rites of 
polytheism. The world had become surfeited with 
Bacchanalia and Saturnalia, and the earnest zeal of 
the Apostles soon found converts in abundance. But 
the Pantheistic church called in the aid of the pOAvers 
of the State to crush the new religion, as the Catholic 
clergy subsequently did to suppress the Reformation, 
and the State accordingly persecuted the Christians. 
Now persecution will only intensify spiritual exalta- 
tion ; it makes religious heroes and martyrs ; but it 
also checks progress and engenders superstition. The 
early Christians suffered cheerfully and willingly, 
they bore the cross imposed upon them, but at the 
same time being, pariah-like, degraded ; they lost in 
course of time, much of the old and grand simplicity 
of their worship ; and adopted imperceptibly, a great 
deal of the polytheistic system in their faith. The 
monotheistic feature of the system of Jesus had al- 
ready become changed in the days of Constantine to 
that of the Trinity. Nor did the evil stop here. In 
course of time the Trinity became of even less im- 
portance than the mother of Jesus, and to her, instead 



ASIANS AND SOCINIANS. I4I 

of to the Supreme Being, were the supplications of 
men directed. To add to this multiplicity of gods 
was the aim of the chief ecclesiastical authority. The 
apostles first, then the martyrs, and finally the saints 
took subordinate places in the Christian Pantheon, 
and all of them had churches built in their honor, 
and altars consecrated to their worship. Instead of 
men being brought nearer to God, they were taught 
that more mediators were needed, that these media- 
tors must be supplicated, and were therefore worthy 
of adoration. 

But it must not be supposed that this change, so 
radical in its character, was made without opposition. 
The introduction of the doctrine of the Trinity led 
to early and violent struggles in the church. The 
retrograde movement met with especial disfavor from 
Arius, Archbishop of Alexandria, one of the purest 
of men, to whom belongs the honor of first boldly 
declaring against the monstrosity which was after- 
wards, chiefly by the aid' of the political power, fast- 
ened upon the church. The history of this struggle 
is very interesting, especially in showing how the 
doctrines of faith were changed in the church and 
how monotheism ceased to be its cardinal principle. 
Though the Arians were defeated in the contest by 
the Trinitarians, principally by the aid of the Roman 
Emperor,- their faith still revived, and especially 
since the effects of the Reformation have made them- 
selves felt. Even before the Reformation the remark- 
able sect of the Socinians rejected the. doctrine of the 
Trinity because it looked " unreasonable." But the 
true successors of the Arians are, no doubt, those 



142 THE COMING CHURCH. 

composing the liberal wing of the Unitarian church, 
of whose views the late Theodore Parker was the 
exponent. This church, while believing in the truth 
of the doctrines taught by Jesus, as they would be- 
lieve in all truths, is at all times willing to advance 
and keep step with the progress of science. Such a 
church, in my opinion, comes nearer to the require- 
ments of the age than any other which has existed, 
or which exists to-day. It is looked upon with dis- 
favor by the older churches, and has repeatedly been 
charged with infidelity. In spite of all opposition it 
has been steadily gaining ground, and will ultimately 
become the theological school of the land. 



fart in. 

CHAPTER XXVIII. 

Having now briefly treated, with the exception 
of Islamism, of the principles of the most prominent 
creeds which have prevailed, or yet prevail among 
men, and having also touched upon the philosophical 
systems of antiquity, I have now to speak of the phi- 
losophy of modern times. Though the successor of 
the old Athenian schools, modern philosophy differs 
so essentially from the old system, partly through 
the influence of Christianity, and partly on account 
of the progress in knowledge, that a succinct account 
of its origin and advancement will be found not un- 
interesting. , 

When by the inroads of the Germanic tribes into 
its territories, the Roman Empire fell, there followed, 
necessarily, a retrograde movement in civilization. 
The conquerors of Rome were barbarians in the 
purest sense of the word. They had no literature 
themselves, and had no inclination or love for study 
or for letters. Learning all of a sudden was at a dis- 
count, and from Odoacer (476) till the days of Charle- 
magne (756) — nearly three hundred years — almost 

Cimmerian darkness reigned in Europe. More than 

(143) 



144 THE CLOISTER THE REFUGE OF LITERATURE. 

nine-tenths of the literary treasures gathered by the 
Romans from all parts of the vast empire, and con- 
centrated in the libraries of the ancient metropolis 
of the world, perished by the torch in the hands of 
the followers of Genseric, of Attila, of Alaric and of 
others, and had it not been for the preservation of 
the Byzantine Empire for the time being, the ruin 
and loss would have been still greater. So great was 
men's ignorance, and so little was learning esteemed 
at that period, that even princes did not receive an 
education fitted for the functions of their station, and 
were often even unable to read or write. Scholars 
were then frequently looked upon with suspicion, and, 
in more than one case, accused of impiety, of being in 
league with the devil, of practicing the black art, etc. 
There was only one class of men, indeed, who could 
safely devote themselves to literature, namely, the 
ecclesiastics. But even among these, learning was 
not very highly esteemed, and we read of more than 
one bishop, who was mightier in the field or in the 
chase than in the closet. Yet we are mainly indebted 
to the clergy for whatever fragments were rescued 
of the vast literary stores at the successive pillages 
of Italy and Rome. Their cloisters were most gen- 
erally the only places respected, and, consequently, 
exempted from the rapacity of the barbarian soldiery, 
and therefore afforded places for the safe-keeping, 
not only of treasure, but frequently of women and 
children. 

The clergy having thus become almost the sole 
possessors of the old records of learning, and being 
the only class of society who had leisure, because 



THE POWER OF ECCLESIASTIC1SM. 145 

their means of sustenance were furnished them by 
the labors of others, were able to devote their time 
to the pursuit of letters, and the word " clerk," to-day, 
shows that in olden times the clergy had charge, not 
alone of spiritual affairs, but of all matters in which 
learning was necessary. The principal civil offices 
of the State were filled in all European kingdoms by 
ecclesiastics, for the simple reason that they alone 
were, by education, fitted for the discharge of the 
duties of those offices. 

As a natural consequence, the ecclesiastical power 
increased, and eventually preponderated over the 
other classes which composed the commonwealth, 
and at an early day, the clergy was solicitous to pre- 
serve to itself for all time to come, the vast influence 
of which its members had become possessed. That 
they succeeded in doing so, and continued for cen- 
turies to control the politics of Europe, must be as- 
cribed to the numberless political divisions which 
took place after the downfall of the Carlovingian 
Empire. The dismemberment of Europe, which fol- 
lowed the death of Charlemagne, created jealousies 
among princes and nations, which were only too 
often attended by bloody conflicts. In those days, 
when each duke, count or marquis strove after polit- 
ical independence, the church alone was a united 
power, and in its unity consisted its strength. The 
bishops of Rome, who arrogated to themselves the 
leadership of the church, soon became the real rulers 
of Europe. They made or unmade kings, as their 
interests required, they gave and took lands as re- 
wards or punishments, and they ordered States to 
7 



1 46 POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE OF THE CHURCH. 

commence wars or to suspend them. Emperors held 
their stirrups for them, and kings laid their crowns 
at their feet. 

Through the edicts of Gregory VII. the union of 
the ecclesiastical power became intensified, and for a 
time it must have looked as if the powers of the pope 
had become too firmly established ever to be shaken, 
much less destroyed. Matrimony being forbidden 
to all members of the clergy, the priests were com- 
pelled to devote their whole lives to the interests of 
the church, The social ties being thereby severed, 
the political independence of the church was now 
boldly proclaimed, and bishops looked to Rome in- 
stead of to their own sovereigns for their mitres. 
Lastly, even the kings and princes were made subor- 
dinate to the pope and his cardinals, and the immense 
power which they thereby acquired, made it a com- 
paratively easy task to raise and equip those immense 
armies which, under the name of Crusaders, poured 
from all parts of Western Europe into Asia Minor 
and Syria. 

But what happened to the Roman Republic hap- 
pened also to the Church. What no foreign enemy 
could have done, its members did themselves. They 
accomplished the destruction of its political power. 
The immense treasures which for centuries flowed 
into Rome, gradually corrupted the priesthood. 
Boccaccio (13 13 — 1375) more than once mentions in 
the Decameron, the dissolute habits of the clergy, and 
the scandal which these created in public. Mon- 
taigne (1533 — 1592) in his essays, also, is occasionally 
severe on the loose conduct of the ecclesiastics ; but 



TEE REFORMATION. 



147 



the great satire of Rabelais (1495 — 1553), more than 
all other writings, exposed the rottenness of the sys- 
tem. The clergy itself is responsible for the de- 
struction of church influence, and its members had 
fallen already so much into disrepute, that the task 
of its final overthrow was a matter of comparative 
ease. 

It was in Germany where the storm first burst 
forth, and the Papal court itself furnished the cause. 
Driven by the need of money occasioned by his ex- 
travagance, Leo X. had sent Tetzel, a Dominican 
monk, and other agents, across the Alps to Germany, 
to sell indulgences or pardons of sin to the people. 
Benighted as the people in that age undoubtedly 
were, this outrage on their understandings, on their 
reason, was too great to escape their notice. A priest 
himself, and a man by no means regarded as highly 
gifted or learned, had the courage to expose the 
fraud, and to oppose the powers of the great Church 
of which he was a member. 

But so ripe was the age already for this revolu- 
tion, and so utterly corrupt had the clergy become, 
that Luther had comparatively an easy task to ac- 
complish. So rapid was the Reformation, that at his 
death (1548), the secession was final and complete, 
and the adherents of the reformed faith were already 
counted by millions. What perhaps contributed as 
much as anything else to the spread of the Reforma- 
tion was the art of printing, which had come into 
existence but a short time previous to the Reforma- 
tion, and to this art is also to be attributed the re- 
vival of literature in Europe. With its introduction 



148 LITERATURE REVIVES. 

appropriately closes the darkness of the Middle 
Ages, and the history of modern times commences. 
It is from this epoch that we again find mention in 
the records of the times, of philosophical schools. 
Out of the long catalogue of illustrious names, I have 
selected a few, mainly in order to show the progress 
the great science has made during the past four 
hundred years. 



FBAJSrCIS BAG OK 



149 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

The first name on the list of modern philosophers 
is undoubtedly Francis Bacon, a name at once in- 
famous in politics and illustrious in philosophy. The 
greatness of Bacon as a philosopher can scarcely be 
appreciated at this day, for we can hardly form a 
conception of the barbarous state of England, or of 
Europe generally, at the time of the discovery of 
America. As yet the priests and a small portion of 
the upper classes had the monopoly of the pursuit of 
letters, and an author, however able his work, had 
but few readers to profit by his labors. But the Es- 
says and the Novum Organon of Bacon, were of such 
general interest that even in his life-time his fame had 
spread abroad, and the literary reputation he had 
acquired saved him from the ignominious punish- 
ment his corrupt acts as a Minister of Justice de- 
served. Though of late his valuable services to 
physical, as well as to moral philosophy, have been 
overshadowed by the host of newer and better in- 
formed men, it must not be forgotten that Bacon 
was a pioneer in a hazardous work. So grossly 
superstitious was yet his age, that when we consider 
Bacon's natural timidity, we may come to the con- 
clusion that he left much unsaid for fear of persecu- 
tion. Had he been untrammeled by these consider- 



150 



DESCARTES AND SPINOZA. 



ations, had he not bejen connected with the court, 
we might not unreasonably expect to have had 
works of even a higher character from his pen. 
Generally, he is described as the forerunner of the 
school of positive philosophy ; that is, the philosophy 
which is founded upon scientific demonstrations. 
But as science was as yet in its infancy in Bacon's 
days compared to its status in our times, it cannot 
be claimed that he could have made as great a pro- 
gress in philosophy as he would have made had he 
lived at a later period. But at all events it may be 
said with justice, that with him begins the new era 
in European literature. History, while it has cast a 
veil over his faults, has, at the same time, gratefully 
remembered his services. 

The next great name we come to is that of Des- 
cartes (1596 — 1650). Like Bacon, this philosopher 
did not confine himself solely to Moral Philosophy, 
but occupied himself also with physics and mathe- 
matics. His discoveries in the latter branch were 
of the highest value, and he may be considered the 
founder of Analytical Geometry. His chief merit as a 
moral philosopher, no doubt, is the boldness of his 
new method of investigation. Discarding all the old 
dogmas,- he took Nature for his teacher in his philo- 
sophical studies, and endeavored by his own investi- 
gations and unaided inquiries to find out the aim of 
all philosophy — the truth. He drew a distinct line 
in his system between spirit and matter, and held 
that both must act in conjunction, or concert with 
each other, in order to be effective. 

The successor of Descartes was Spinoza (1632 — 



JOHN LOCKE. 151 

1677), one of the most original thinkers to which the 
world has ever given birth. There is more romance 
connected with his life than generally falls to the lot 
of a recluse like Spinoza. Wealth; station and fami- 
ly ties, were alike disregarded by him in his enthu- 
siastic pursuit of science, and the major part of his life 
was a continual struggle between searching for means 
of existence and pursuit of knowledge. Unfortunately 
for the cause of science, disease at an early age un- 
dermined his health, and in the midst of his labors 
death came in to claim the body of the man who was 
at once, one of the profoundest thinkers and the pur- 
est of mortals. The defect in his system, though it 
is monotheistic, lies in its tendency toward pan- 
theism. Thought in man, Spinoza regarded not as a 
mere attribute of the human soul, but as a part of the 
Deity itself. Hence he regarded every thought, 
wish, or feeling in man, as a manifestation of the Su- 
preme Being. It is easy to see that such a course of 
reasoning eventually tends to the conviction that 
man himself, or rather his soul, is but a part of the 
Supreme Being. But in justice to Spinoza, it must be 
said that he himself, never went so far toward estab- 
lishing Pantheism, as some of his successors did, who 
boldly assumed God to be only Nature and nothing 
else. 

Quite different from Spinoza appears John Locke 
(1632 — 1704). His reputation as a philosophical 
writer rests mainly on his celebrated Essay on the 
Understanding, wherein he first divided the source of 
knowledge as being acquired partly by innate con- 
ception, and secondly, by external causes. The 



152 SLR ISAAC NEWTON. 

chief fault with Locke's philosophical labors is the 
fact that he did not go far and deep enough ; but 
this, as in Bacon's case, must be extenuated by the 
limited progress of science, and also, as we shall 
hereafter see in the instance of Newton, to the de- 
pendence of Locke on the Church of England. Hav- 
ing been reared by that Church, and through its in- 
fluence advanced, the ties of gratitude naturally had 
the tendency of biasing the mind of the philosopher, 
and explains much that seems to be inconsistent in 
his actions with his words. It is, therefore, no won- 
der any longer, that Locke, who wrote the strongest 
argument for Toleration, could afterwards advocate 
the exclusion of Roman Catholics from participation 
in the political affairs of the nation. But John Locke 
was neither the first nor the last man who exempli- 
fied the difference between preaching and practice. 
It is only his prominence as a philosopher which 
makes this contrast more marked in the eyes of the 
world, and open to the criticism of posterity. 

Sir Isaac Newton (1640 — 1727) does not properly 
belong here, as he devoted his attention to the in- 
vestigation of physical science in preference to med- 
itation on the principles of moral philosophy. Still, 
what little he has written on the latter topic is not 
uninteresting, and shows us that he must have con- 
sidered the subject to be of too much importance 
to be altogether neglected. But Newton was even 
more timid and cautious than Locke. While Oxford 
would willingly have pushed him into prominence, 
while he sat in Parliament and was Master of the 
Mint, the great philosopher must have hated con- 



LEIBNITZ, LES8ING AND MENDELSSOHN. 153 

troversy which either politics or philosophy would 
have given him, and the skepticism which he har- 
bored was never obtruded on the public eye. While 
his services were great to physical science, it must 
always be regretted that so great a mind did not in- 
vestigate in a larger degree, the more abstruse sub- 
ject of moral philosophy. 

The great German name of Leibnitz (1646 — 1716) 
comes next after that of Newton. Like his English 
contemporary, Leibnitz devoted his attention chiefly 
to the investigation of physical science, but he also 
left behind him several important works on moral phi- 
losophy which show great originality of thought and 
conception. The chief characteristic of the system of 
Leibnitz consists in his assumed Pre-established Har- 
mony. Following Descartes in making a division be- 
tween spirit and matter, Leibnitz maintained that 
though distinct from each other, there was such a per- 
fect union as necessarily compelled the joint action 
of body and mind. Another noticeable feature in the 
system of Leibnitz, was his theory of Optimism, 
whereby he assumed that though the creation might 
by no means have been perfect, yet, at the same time, 
it was the best for the wants of man which could 
have been created.' 

Lessing (1 729-1 781) and Moses Mendelssohn (1729- 
1786), who worked much in common, seem to have 
followed and adapted to the spirit of the age, the doc- 
trines of Socrates, rather than to have added much 
original thought to philosophy. Like their great 
original, their lives were an exemplification of their 
teachings, and they are moreover the first philoso- 

7* 



154 KANT— FICHTE— HEGEL. 

phers of note who worked for toleration and freedom 
of conscience. Lessing's Nathan der Weise is a noble 
monument for all time to come, while Mendelssohn's 
PhcEdon, or the Immortality of the Soul, is a work for 
all ages. 

But their fame as philosophers was eclipsed by the 
advent of Kant (i 724-1 804), whose labors materially 
influenced, altered and advanced the study of phi- 
losophy. His Critik of Pure Reason, wherein the 
limits of the conception of the soul, the world and 
God are set forth, has long been a standard work of 
philosophical science. Kant's conception of the De- 
ity, instead of being based upon theological or le- 
gendary grounds, was the result of his own reason- 
ing. Through Nature, Kant held that every one 
could divine the existence of the Supreme Being. 
Rejecting all traditions on the subject, he held that 
three things were necessary to man, namely, Freedom, 
Immortality of the Soul, and the Being of God. 

Next to Kant we come to Fichte (1762-18 19), who 
may be considered as the founder of the Idealistic 
school of philosophy. Assuming the Ego as opposed 
to the Non-Ego, Fichte's hypothesis was, that this 
Ego can only become a fact of consciousness or place 
itself through the antithesis of the Non-Ego. How- 
ever, much of his writing is extremely mystical and 
tortuous for the mind, and though he had a great 
reputation in his life-time, he is comparatively un- 
noticed at present. 

The same may be said, almost, of Hegel, a thinker 
of still deeper powers (1 770-1 830). This philosopher, 
in the main, devoted his attention to the disquisition 



SCHELLING—REID— HAMILTON. 155 

of the process of existence and of thought. Accord- 
ing to Hegel's reasoning, existence, although reveal- 
ed by innate consciousness, must be explained by 
thought. Hence his theory of becoming, or Werden. 
It must be remarked as noteworthy, that Hegel, 
though himself one of the most orthodox Lutherans, 
laid the foundation and paved the way for Strauss, 
Renan, and others less known, who, pursuing the an- 
tagonistic speculations of their teacher to a wider ex- 
tent, have the merit of separating theology from phi- 
losophy. That this should be a meritorious proceed- 
ing, may look anomalous at first, but when we con- 
sider how many theological systems there are, and 
when we know that only one of these can be true, we 
must award praise to those men who are bold and 
conscientious enough to assail error, even when it 
tends to subvert opinions and dogmas which have 
been handed down to us through centuries, and have 
been received therefore with veneration by the mass 
of the people. 

Schelling (1 775-1 854), the last and also the most 
eminent of the great German philosophers who 
flourished during the first part of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, commenced his career by following Fichte's 
" ideal " theory. But this " ideal " was to Schelling's 
mind less expressive of the Supreme Being than the- 
Infinite Absolute, of whose existence men received 
knowledge through intellectual intuition. Schelling 
•was the most advanced philosophical writer of his 
time, and found admirers not only in his own coun- 
try, but throughout Europe and America. 

Thomas Reid (171 0-1796), and after him Sir Wil- 



156 COUSIN— COMTE. 

Ham Hamilton (1 783-1 856), deserve especial mention 
as the founders of the Scotch philosophical school. 
In the former's Inquiry into the Human Mind, and the 
latter's Lectures, the original system of John Locke is 
amplified. Speculation at the same time is limited 
by common sense, and the extent to which it is pos- 
sible to push progress into the realms of thought, is 
sharply defined, or more properly speaking, abridged, 
by what is termed the insufficiency of our mental 
powers. 

Victor Cousin (1 792-1 867) introduced the German 
philosophy into France, but it was in an eclectic man- 
ner, borrowing a little from each different school, 
and the most from Hegel, whose theories he followed 
in their most radical, pantheistic features. 

Auguste Comte (1 795-1 857), the last name we shall 
mention, may be regarded as really the founder of 
the positive philosophy ; that is, the philosophy whose 
speculations are founded upon facts demonstrated by 
science, and may therefore be pronounced to be pos- 
itive, or assured, instead of merely hypothetic. Dis- 
carding the theological or fictitious, and the meta- 
physical or abstract, as systems not suited to the 
wants of the present age, Comte boldly proclaims 
that it requires science to establish the object of phi- 
losophy; namely, the truth. Meritorious as his la- 
bors undoubtedly are, the great fault of his work 
consists in his peculiar ideas regarding Catholicity 
and the Reformation. Indeed, according to M. 
Comte's conception, the Reformation, which effected 
the separation of the Western European Church was 
entirely a needless work. He argues to his own 



ROME FAVORS IGNORANCE. 157 

satisfaction, that in course of time Catholicity would 
have done what the Reformation effected, in a more 
Complete style, and therefore in a more satisfactory 
manner, had it been left to work it out alone, and 
had such men as Luther and Calvin never existed. 
He even endeavors to show that the progress of free 
inquiry was not advanced, but rather retarded by 
Protestantism. It is conclusive to his mind, that for 
true philosophy we must look to Catholic countries, 
and especially to France. Such views, it is almost 
needless to add, are not sustained by historical facts, 
and hardly deserve refutation. Still it may be well 
to turn back to the times of the Reformation, in or- 
der to see what benefits philosophy has derived 
through this great revolution. 

The Reformation found European civilization un- 
der the care of the ecclesiastic order, and more espe- 
cially under the control of the Italian priesthood. 
Rome directed through its legates and bishops, not 
only the spiritual affairs of the continent, but it guided 
also the intellectual course of its nations. It had great 
power to do good, to promote education, to advance 
free inquiry ; but there is no evidence left to us, nor 
can there be any adduced to show that the great 
central ecclesiastical power on the banks of the Tiber 
was ever solicitous for popular inquiry into spiritual 
matters. On the contrary, Rome reserved to the 
clergy this privilege,, and dreaded, even before the 
Reformation, to educate the masses of the people, for 
fear of weakening the power and influence of the 
Holy See. Consequently, the Reformation found 
the nations of Europe in a lamentable state of igno- 



158 DESPOTISM THE HANDMAID OF THE CHURCH. 

ranee. The church having established its power 
through the efforts of Gregory VI I., Innocent III., 
Paul III. and other popes, sought to perpetuate it, 
not by working hand in hand with the masses, but 
by everywhere lending its support to establish and 
strengthen the despotic powers of the kings and 
princes of the continent. These alliances between 
Church and State were the hardest yokes any people 
ever had to bear, and the condition of Europe at the 
time of the Reformation, showed the pernicious ef- 
fects of this system in the fullest measure. 

On no class of society did the burden fall heavier 
than on those devoted to agricultural pursuits. The 
peasants once free — yeomen, or common men — became 
enslaved. Besides being bound to the soil of the- 
estates of the upper classes, whether in the hands of 
the nobles or those of the church, they were com- 
pelled to furnish the fighting element of the nation, 
and for the services they rendered, they neither re- 
ceived wages nor thanks. In peace as well as in 
war, they supported the church, the prince and the 
baron, and what scanty means were left to them for 
existence was looked upon as gifts from the three 
upper classes above-mentioned. The burghers or 
townsmen were in better condition, but it was 
through their own efforts, unaided by, and often even 
in opposition to, the church. Indeed the organization 
of the great Hanseatic League was as much a pro- 
test against the encroachments of the ecclesiastic 
order, as a defence against the arbitrary powers of 
princes. The instances where in France, Germany, 
the Netherlands and even Italy, the burghers drove 



PROTESTANTISM FAVORS PROGRESS. 



159 



bishops and abbots out of their towns, are too nu- 
merous to mention, and tend to show the hardship 
of the ecclesiastic rule in places where the church 
possessed the temporal as well as the spiritual au- 
thority. 

Another noteworthy fact is, that the cities, and 
especially those of the Hanseatic league, whose peo- 
ple had made greater progress than the other classes 
in civilization, were the first to embrace the Reformed 
faith, and that these cities eventually compelled the 
princes to follow their example. That the work of 
the Reformation was not completed, that it was re- 
tarded, and its course of progress violently hindered, 
is perfectly true. But this was not the fault of the 
people. It was caused by the alliance of the new 
church with the princes. Where there were no 
princes, or where their authority was but limited, as 
for instance in Holland, the Revolution was much 
more complete, and it is perfectly natural therefore 
that religious toleration should have been established 
in that country before it found a footing in any other 
part of Europe. But as soon as the house of Orange 
had become powerful and reigned as Stadtholders 
over the old republic, we find an alliance of Church 
and State, persecution of dissenters like the Armini- 
ans, and an arrest of progress of free inquiry. 

But notwithstanding these drawbacks, great as 
they undoubtedly were, the progress of the Protest- 
ant portion of Europe since the Reformation, in lit- 
erature and science, has been twice as great and 
even more so, than in purely Catholic countries like 
Spain and Italy. And we see this same ratio of prog- 



160 CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 

ress reproduced across the Atlantic on the Ameri- 
can Continent. Whoever will take the slightest 
trouble to compare Protestant North America with 
Catholic South America will easily see the superior- 
ity of the former. Nor need we, indeed, go so far, 
since Upper and Lower Canada give* us a striking 
example to show how much the Reformation — bring- 
ing with it greater freedom of inquiry — has benefited 
mankind. It must be admitted that the Protestants 
themselves, even when discouraged by the State, 
steadily pursued their inquiries. They did not in 
their course of investigation reach the same result, 
and consequently the formation of sects or different 
churches was the necessary action. The ecclesiasti- 
cal power thereby became weakened ; but it cannot 
be said that philosophical science or truth were in- 
jured by it. Nowhere is this better illustrated, and 
nowhere has the cause of philosophy been more 
benefited by this revolution, than in the United 
States. Since the early colonial times, the division of 
the churches has been too great and too distinct to 
allow of any perfect union. The want of a combined 
influence will prevent them for all time to come 
from acquiring political power, and so well is this 
known to the clergy themselves, that with few ex- 
ceptions, they have forborne to interfere or meddle, 
in affairs of this nature. While we hear of a parti 
pretre, of ultramontanism in Mexico,, in Peru, and 
in other South American republics, we look in vain 
for such a manifestation of clerical power in the great 
republic of the North. 

Great Britain herself, which M. Comte describes 



CHURCH AM) STATE. 161 

with true Gallic antipathy, as having been retarded 
by its oligarchical influences and by its union of 
Church and State, represents the good effects of the 
Reformation, better than any other country in Eu- 
rope, especially when we compare the condition of 
the lower classes in that country, with that of France, 
the most advanced of Catholic nations. The impetus 
given to the advancement of knowledge by the seces- 
sion of the large majority of the nation from the 
Church of Rome, was so great that it overbalanced 
the effects of the retrograde movement of the union 
of Church and State. Notwithstanding all the power 
the Episcopal Church of England derives from its 
alliance with the temporal authority, it has never re- 
ceived into its fold one-half of the population of either 
England or Wales. It never took root in Scotland, 
and is but a badge of Saxon slavery in Ireland. 
It is due likewise to the Dissenters in England to 
add, that they have striven earnestly for a purifica- 
tion and simplicity in theology, and that though not 
all strictly monotheistic, they have prepared the way 
for its ultimate establishment. 

In the United States, where the reader is aware 
there is no connection whatever between Church 
and State, the great majority of the population can- 
not be even classed as members of any particular 
church ; and, in fact, scarcely one-third, or perhaps 
not one-fourth, are professed members and regular 
visitants at public worship. Yet it would be wrong 
to assert that this great majority of non-professors 
were irreligious men ; or, that they did not acknowl- 
edge the existence of the Supreme Being ; or, that 



1 62 NEW ENGLAND THEOCRACY. 

they were not grateful to the Creator for his gifts. 
On the contrary, we can boldly assert, that there is 
a no more truly religious people on the face of the 
globe, than the citizens of the great republic, and for 
the reason, mainly, that the inquiry after truth is here 
not limited. It shows that men can, unguided, pur- 
sue their investigations, and when they do so prop- 
erly, that they cannot fail to become convinced of 
the greatness of God, and appreciate man's true po- 
sition on earth. All this is due certainly to the Re- 
formation. Had the Reformation not taken place, 
the United States, it may be taken for granted, would 
never have existed. There might have been colonies 
or kingdoms, but never a land of freedom. 

Though in the early settlement of the country 
there was an attempt made to establish a theocratic 
form of government in some of the New England 
colonies, which was really put in operation in Massa- 
chusetts by the Puritans, yet it failed to keep con- 
trol of public affairs, for the simple reason that such 
a form of government was no longer suitable to the 
advanced state of civilization. The clergy itself, 
though its members were uniformly respected, and 
though the colonists cheerfully contributed to their 
support, felt that the post of leader in a new coun- 
try, hardly yet conquered . from the red man, was 
more fitted for men engaged in secular than in spirit- 
ual affairs. Even here the clergy, however, retained 
for a long period, almost a monopoly of the educa- 
tion of the people, till finally after the war of the 
Revolution, the States, having become fixed and per- 
manent governments, made ample and liberal pro- 



COMTE CRITICISED. 1 63 

vision, to provide public education within their re- 
spective commonwealths, for all classes ; made in- 
struction a duty to be exercised by the State, and 
not alone by one class of the people. 

A remarkable contrast, as I have already observed, 
one which clearly shows the beneficial character of 
the Reformation on human progress, may be seen 
when we compare the United States with the repub- 
lics of Central and South America. In these latter 
countries, richer in wealth and more favored by 
nature, the Protestant element was totally wanting 
when the people proclaimed their independence from 
Spain. If the Reformation, then, as it is alleged by 
M. Comte, really exerted everywhere a retrograde 
influence, we should surely have reason to expect in 
South America, where Catholicity was left undis- 
turbed, where no Reformation came, and Luther and 
Calvin were not thought of, the largest degree of 
progress. Quite the contrary effect is, however, met 
here. The progress of the Latin race in South 
America has been of slow growth, even slower than 
in Spain. While North America has largely con- 
tributed to science, and we find men like Franklin, 
Morse, Jackson and others, in the annals of progress, 
we cannot find a single name of this favored part of 
the world which has contributed to the development 
of science. While Humboldt, Bonpland, Stephens, 
Squier and others, could find great opportunities 
for acquiring knowledge in those countries, the na- 
tive inhabitants could not appreciate their own coun- 
try themselves, because there had been no progress 
among them, nor could there be any as long as the 



1 64 TEE STRUGGLE IN FRANCE. 

Church was continued as a State institution, and 
was opposed to all reforms which were asked for, 
through fear of weakening its power. 

A notable contest in France ought to be noticed 
in connection with this matter, namely, the struggle 
between the University of Paris and the parti pre- 
tre of France, for the control of popular education. 
There the Church of Rome had been excluded from 
having a voice in the secular education of the peo- 
ple, yet through the supineness, if not the collusion, 
of the Cabinet, the sole direction of education was in 
the reign of Louis Philippe, wrested from the Uni- 
versity. The clergy received the power of visitation. 
The result of this measure was foreseen by a few 
men like Cousin, Thiers and Roger Collard, but the 
effects were not felt till years afterwards, even till to 
to-day, when one-fifth of all the children throughout 
France are deprived of facilities for acquiring an 
education. 



SECULAR EDUCATION. 165 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

I have dwelt on this topic longer than others, be- 
cause I do deem it necessary to show that philosophy, 
and especially progressive philosophy, requires for 
the extension of its usefulness, a system of education 
which is untrammeled by the sectarian dogmas of 
any one of the numerous creeds of Christian theo- 
logy. Indeed, education in the United States is 
forced into the hands of the State, for the simple 
reason that were we willing to give it to the clergy, 
we should be called upon to decide upon which set 
of ecclesiastics to bestow it. We should have to say 
which, in our opinion, was the true and orthodox 
faith. Now as each Church claims to be the only 
orthodox one, all the others must be wrong. It is 
easy to foresee that a selection of one church out of 
all others as being the true church, would not satisfy 
the majority of the people even should it be done. 
There would be, not without cause, great dissatisfac- 
tion among the people, and education would not be 
advanced by the dissensions which would be sure to 
follow. Again, were we to parcel out the functions 
of education to the clergy of the different creeds, we 
should destroy the uniformity of the system of edu- 
cation, and thereby injure its character. The educa- 
tion of the people should be uniform as well as uni- 



1 66 MONOTHEISTIC PHILOSOPHY. 

versal, but in parceling it out among the churches we 
should institute as many systems of instruction as 
there are churches among us. The necessity for the 
separation of secular from clerical education has been 
fully realized in late years, and it has had the ten- 
dency to weaken the power of the clergy. Men have 
begun to make a distinction between moral philoso- 
phy and theology. The former is now considered 
as an essential branch of secular education, while the 
latter has been left under the control of the ecclesi- 
astics. Whatever dogmas these may teach in pri- 
vate establishments, whether in churches or schools, 
the State is not responsible for, but the philosophy 
taught in schools, endowed and supported by the 
State, should be strictly monotheistic, and it ought 
not to be hampered by the theological views of any 
creeds. 

The monotheism of philosophy differs from that of 
theology, and is preferable to it because it is the 
same everywhere. But it is not so with the mono- 
theism of theology. For what may be Christianity 
at St. Petersburg is heresy at Rome, and what is 
orthodox at Madrid is an abomination at Aberdeen. 
The faith which claims its origin through Jesus 
Christ, varies so widely in different quarters of the 
world, that it is no longer possible to decide which 
is true Christianity and which is not. Monotheistic 
Philosophy, while it is based on the same principle 
on which Jesus founded his faith, is the same every- 
where, and teaches the great lessons of love and 
truth, not through books or catechisms, but through 
the contemplation of nature. 



FANATICISM. 1 67 

Again, while theology is eminently conservative, 
while it adheres tenaciously to certain articles or 
doctrines of faith which are regarded as unchange- 
able, philosophy is at all times ready to keep prog- 
ress with the advance of science. Who does not 
recollect, for instance, with what fierce resistance the 
clergy fought against the investigations of Coperni- 
cus and Galileo ? Even in our own times, geology 
is denounced, because its demonstrations happen not 
to sustain the cosmogony of Genesis. That there 
should be a strife of this nature between Science and 
Theology, may, at the first glance, seem rather 
anomalous, yet if we investigate more profoundly, 
we shall find that such a struggle must come. When 
we consider the reverence with which all traditions 
— handed down for centuries from age to age — are 
held by the religious world, and especially by the 
clergy, we shall find it perfectly reasonable that all 
innovations tending to impair the validity of these 
traditions are destined to meet with the most deter- 
mined opposition at the hands of those who believe 
the old doctrines to be true, and who regard any 
deviation from them as sacrilegious. This opposi- 
tion, in its most intense form, is what we call fanati- 
cism, one of the most violent of human paroxysms. 
This fanaticism has already cost the world millions 
of lives. The religious wars have been at once the 
most bloody, the most cruel, and the most senseless. 
Against fanaticism reason becomes powerless, and 
it is only when its fury is spent that men are apt to 
see the cruel folly of which they have been guilty. 
If, therefore, the Carthaginians, under the spell of 



x 68 PROGRESS OF REASON. 

this fanaticism, could throw their children into the 
fire as a sacrifice to Moloch, if Catholics could deliv- 
er thousands of Jews and Protestants to the faggots 
of the Inquisition, it should be no wonder that in our 
day, men who hold different views regarding reli- 
gion or the Supreme Being, should arouse the oppo- 
sition of the leaders of the theological schools, that 
they should be branded as infidels, atheists, or here- 
siarchs, and that they should be singled out for the 
scorn and condemnation of the world. 

But as the love of truth is innate in man, and as 
science is really only occupied with the acquisition 
of truth, fanaticism in the end must give way to 
reason, and when truth shall prevail, becomes only 
a question of time. The process may be slow, but it 
is nevertheless certain. Though it may be a task 
of centuries, the activity of science is ceaseless. Each 
year, each day, each hour, adds to its progress, and 
the onward movement of philosophy always keeps step 
with the corresponding march of civilization. While 
theology, or rather sectarian theology, has been com- 
pelled to be stationary, whenever fixed canon laws 
were made, and unalterable dogmas proclaimed, 
philosophy has been forced to be progressive in or- 
der to be beneficial to mankind. While borrowing 
from the theological S)^stem the maxims of morality 
adapted to the welfare of humanity, it has at the 
same time rejected whatever was inconsistent with 
the demonstrations of science, and, in many cases, 
even contrary to the laws of nature. 

We know, for instance, that the ancients had but 
very imperfect knowledge regarding not only the 



PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 169 

heavenly bodies, but even of the earth itself. It was 
not till the first circumnavigation of the globe by 
Magellan's vessels that people became convinced 
that the earth was a globe, that it was round. Steam 
and electricity. were latent and unknown powers un- 
til quite recently. The geological investigations have 
as yet barely revealed to us a thousandth part of 
what we ought to know regarding the composition 
and formation of the earth. The less we know of 
these matters, the farther we are from the truth ; and 
the more knowledge we acquire of them the nearer 
are we approximating to it, and thus by learning the 
truth, by cultivating science, we are necessarily pro- 
gressing in philosophy. The field of inquiry widens 
as we progress in learning, the old limits are extend- 
ing themselves as if by magic, and the scope for in- 
quiry stretches out in correspondence with the ex- 
tent of civilization, with the ability of men to master 
the truth. We have, especially in physics, progress- 
ed so far, that we often ask ourselves whether we are 
likely to leave anything for our successors to 
achieve. We have certainly done our share of the 
work, but our successors, more fortunate perhaps than 
we are, have even a larger field than we had given to 
us, -because they have more accurate premises — 
thanks to the progress of the age — from which they 
can begin their investigations. 

If they are more favored in this respect than we 
are, we also know that we have had a corresponding 
advantage over our predecessors. We knew, for ex- 
ample, more of the laws of nature, of their workings 
and of their results. Almost all of us have begun to 
8 



i ;o 



CRITICISM OF MIRACLES. 



understand that whatever is incompatible with these 
laws, must be ipso facto impossible. When we, there- 
fore, hear of men being changed into animals, and 
women instantaneously transformed into pillars of 
salt, we are led to say, after due reflection and with 
our knowledge of the laws of nature, that such things 
could not be, and therefore we are forced to reject 
these legendary tales as unworthy of belief. 

The advance of science has placed in our- hands, 
what our ancestors did not possess, more ample fa- 
cilities for investigation. It is hardly a matter of sur- 
prise therefore, that miracles should cease to be. per- 
formed, and those reputed to have been done in for- 
mer ages, must undergo scientific criticism. There is 
no doubt that ignorance is responsible for much of 
the hallucination our ancestors labored under, when 
they saw something wonderful, such as an eclipse, 
for instance ; but a great part of these so-called mir- 
acles must be set down as wicked impostures by men 
who pretended to perform them, or by those who 
pretended to have seen them performed. 



BENEFITS OF CIVILIZATION. ij\ 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

It may, perhaps, be charged — and it certainly has 
been often — that, with the decay of the theological 
system, there would be a change for the worse in the 
moral condition of the human race. But the charge 
is fallacious, and cannot be sustained by facts or evi- 
dence. On the contrary, whoever will take the trouble 
to institute the proper investigation, will not fail to 
be convinced that the progress of philosophy has cul- 
tivated — in a corresponding degree — morality among 
men. In all classes of society at the present time, 
for instance, we see a refinement of manners, of liv- 
ing, and even of speech, which contrasts favorably 
with the customs of the preceding ages. The 
improved system of laws we possess, shows better 
than all other evidences the improvement which 
Society — or Man collectively — has made. Even our 
penal laws, by the mitigation . of severity, show that 
the sentiment of brotherly love is more intense. The 
condemned felon is even regarded as a brother in his 
last moments, instead of being brutally quartered, or 
broken across the wheel. Even now man looks upon 
the taking of human life as a judicial punishment, to 
be a grave mistake, thereby ignoring the old Scrip- 
tural law of retaliation of " an eye for an eye." 

But even more apparent is the benefit of civiliza- 



172 THE SUPREMACY OF THE LAW 

tion when we regard the condition of the law-abid- 
ing portion of the community. There seems to be a 
greater degree of comfort, even among the lower 
classes. Slavery and serfdom have been abolished 
in spite of theological vindication of the system of 
bondage, while education has taught self-reliance to 
men who formerly had almost no will of their own. 
The upper classes, those who by superior wealth or 
intellect, are the leaders of Society, have been per- 
haps benefited the most. I must here, in order to 
illustrate this position, quote the remarks of a lady 
who had borrowed of me a copy of Plutarch's Lives. 
On her returning the book, I asked her how she was 
pleased with it. She replied, " that it was quite inter- 
esting, but it seemed strange that almost all these 
celebrated men mentioned by Plutarch had met with 
violent and miserable deaths." It is certainly a 
strange fatalit}^, but after all, one easily explained, 
when we take into consideration the spirit of anti- 
quity, when we notice how little value men set on 
human life, how ready, even on the smallest provo- 
cation, our ancestors were for bloodshed, and how 
invariably the majority of their best and most prom- 
inent men fell victims to the dagger, the scaffold, 
the stake, or even the poisoned cup. 

Our heroes happily — and we have many of them — 
live in happier times. Their prominence among 
their fellows rarely hastens their end, and when an 
event of this kind happens, as, for instance, the as- 
sassination of Abraham Lincoln, it horrifies the world. 
Nor do crimes perpetrated by persons high in au- 
thority, or of high standing in society, any longer es- 



ESTABLISHED BY PHILOSOPHY. 



173 



cape due punishment if the execution of the laws is 
entrusted to faithful guardians. In the Middle Ages 
the baron who killed his villein went unpunished, 
and princes could at pleasure fine, imprison, and 
slaughter their subjects. All these outrages were 
perpetrated when the ecclesiastical power was at its 
greatest height. Those days are gone, thanks to the 
progress of philosophy, one of whose greatest tri- 
umphs is the establishment of the supremacy of the law, 
and the rendering of all men equal before its tribunals. 

The secular law, the offspring of philosophy, has 
often had to be changed and modified to meet 
the wants of the times ; but there is no change in 
theological law unless it be through the revolution- 
ary agency of a movement like the Reformation. 
With the advance of science, with increased means 
of learning, with more ample knowledge of the laws 
of nature, it became a matter of necessity to adopt, 
not alone different laws, but different theories also, 
from those on which the old laws were based. For 
instance, while the Church of England endured per- 
secution at the hands of James II., many of its dis- 
tinguished prelates contended that to depose a conse- 
crated king was a sacrilegious act, a great crime ; but 
the establishment of such a theory in our day would 
provoke only a smile, even among the members of 
the Anglican clergy. • 

Physics even more than jurisprudence have had 
to encounter the opposition of the theological spirit, 
because, through their investigations, they came to 
a direct issue with the old traditions which form the 
foundation of the theological system ; and it was not 



174 THEOLOGICAL MYTHS. 

without a hard struggle that theology was forced to 
succumb. A few illustrations will suffice. None of 
us, for instance, believe now, that, as is recorded in 
Joshua, the sun and moon stood still, since we know 
by the demonstrations of science that such a cessa- 
tion of activity in these heavenly bodies would be con- 
trary to the laws of Nature, and therefore impossible. 
Further, none of us believe that God first created the 
earth and afterwards the sun, the moon and the other 
stars, and that these great bodies were solely created 
for the purpose of affording light to the inhabitants 
of the earth. This account of the earth's or rather 
the world's cosmogony has long ago been discarded 
as legendary, but before the world's belief in the old 
tradition could be shaken, the innovators had to in- 
cur the wrath of the clergy. Were not the evidence 
still extant, we could hardly believe the persecution 
some of the greatest philosophers of comparatively 
modern times had to endure at the hands of the cler- 
gy before the latter were compelled to acknowledge 
the truth. It required and still requires, great cour- 
age to come forward and proclaim these great truths, 
and timidity and intimidation may for a time have 
prevented progress, but such checks at all times are 
only temporary, for there will always be found men 
courageous enough to expose errors, even though 
they may have been believed for a hundred or for a 
thousand years. 

These remarks apply with particular force to 
Christianity, as understood by the theological school, 
as opposed to progressive philosophy. We must, in 
speaking of this species of Christianity, consider the 



SPREAD OF THE REFORMATION. 



175 



condition of the Jews when Jesus appeared among 
them as a reformer. We must next endeavor to find 
out what he taught himself, and what and how much 
was added by his apostles and disciples. We must 
also compare the state of science, both at the birth 
of Christianity and in the ages immediately succeed- 
ing, with its condition in our own day. There is also 
to be taken into account the aspect of Nature — the 
difference in climate, food and soil, which more than 
any other cause separates communities of men and 
establishes their national characteristics, their laws, 
their customs and even their faith. It may justly be 
said that the aspect of Nature, and consequently the 
national characteristics occasioned thereby, did as 
much to prevent the spread of the Reformation 
among the Italians and the Spaniards as the political 
power exercised by either the popes or the kings of 
Spain. On the other hand, it was but natural that 
for opposite reasons the Reformation should have 
spread over the northern part of Europe, notwith- 
standing all the obstacles which the combined au- 
thority of Church and State placed in its way. For 
by the severity of the climate, the greater sterility 
of the soil and the necessity of more wearisome labor 
to procure food, the northerner has to reflect more, 
he has to study more closely the laws of nature in 
order to provide for his existence, than his southern 
neighbor whose wants Nature provides for more 
readily. 

Now we have already seen that the more we are 
compelled to commune with Nature, and the deeper 
we have to study her laws, the better we can com- 



iy6 ADVANTAGES OF A GOLD CLIMATE. 

prehend the workings of the Creator and the nearer 
we approach to perfection. Then, further, those in 
the north being compelled to work in order to pro- 
vide against want in the winter-time, amassed wealth 
much more rapidly than those people who lived in a 
more congenial climate, who had not the same reason 
for making as great exertion of their physical powers 
to provide the means of existence. The natural re- 
sult was, that in the north there was eventually 
greater wealth, and consequently greater leisure. 
More men could be spared from the farms and the 
workshops, and these men devoted their time to lit- 
erary pursuits. I need but refer to the case of the 
Netherlands, perhaps now the ' richest country in 
Europe, in order to illustrate the practical result of 
this state of things. While Italy, in Caesar's time, 
was already the most civilized country of Western 
Europe, a great part of Holland had not as yet been 
reclaimed from the sea. After the great migratory 
period of the Teutonic race had come to an end, the 
people living on the delta of the Rhine being pre- 
vented from pursuing any longer a wandering life, 
had to devote their attention to agricultural pursuits. 
But in order to do this, they had not only to defend 
themselves against the inclemency of the winters, but 
also against the encroachments of the sea. They had 
not alone to lay aside large stores of food, but they 
had also to throw up dykes and build other defences 
against the waves of the ocean. When their popu- 
lation increased, they had to reclaim more land, and 
in order to provide highways for intercourse, they 
had to dig canals. The great industry called forth 



THE FIRST ELEMENT IN CIVILIZATION. 



177 



by the necessities of the nation, soon brought wealth. 
The Netherlands, already in the Middle Ages, were 
proverbial for their riches, and their artisans were so 
skilled that large numbers of Flemish artisans were 
invited to England, where they laid the foundation 
of the English woolen factories. 

Material industry is the first essential element in 
civilization, and neglect of that industry will soon 
produce a decline in civilization and make a return 
to superstition and barbarism not only possible, but 
even necessary. The Arabs serve as a practical illus- 
tration of this position. Living a nomadic life pre- 
vious to the advent of Mohammed, they became a 
united nation under the banner of the great prophet. 
By their exertions they conquered vast countries, 
founded large empires, and became eminent in sci- 
entific pursuits. Their kingdoms in Spain were the 
wonder of the age, and their schools the glory of the 
times. But industry soon relaxed, the kingdoms be- 
came weaker, the schools declined, and both eventu- 
ally fell to rise no more. Spain herself owes a great 
deal of her decline to her driving out her most indus- 
trious inhabitants, the Moriscoes, and Louis XIV. 
impoverished France by his revocation of the edict 
of Nantes, when thousands of industrious Huguenots 
left the country and sought new homes. 

8* 



i;8 THE DOGMAS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

While progress has oftentimes been retarded 
through the influence of the theological spirit, at 
other times its very opposition to the demands of the 
age has in a great degree accelerated the advance of 
civilization, by calling attention to the nature of the 
controversy and interesting men more in it than they 
otherwise would have been. The latest dogmas 
adopted by the Catholic church, the Immaculate 
Conception of the Virgin and the Infallibility of the 
Pope form two striking illustrations. We can think 
of no measures so totally at variance with the spirit 
of the age as these two dogmas, and it is no wonder, 
therefore, that a great many members of the Catholic 
church itself should oppose the incorporation of such 
doctrines of faith into their creed, and by their pro- 
test weaken its power. 

The adoption, therefore, into any theological sys- 
tem of such retrograde tenets, while it may retard the 
progress of those who embrace them, has no influ- 
ence to retard the progress of philosophy generally ; 
but on the contrary, it will increase the numbers of 
the opposition by the accession of those who cannot 
be convinced, and therefore cannot submit to those 
tenets. In an age which demands more freedom of 
thought, there will certainly be found few men will- 



INCOMPLETENESS OF TEE REFORMATION. \jg 

ing to declare the judgment of one man infallible, 
even though that man be the greatest bishop in the 
world. Assumptions of this character indeed appear 
almost ridiculous, and are contrary to the spirit of 
the times. They appear better calculated to lead 
men back to the dark ages. But neither Church nor 
State can do this. 

Were another inroad of barbarian people possible, 
were Europe and America to be overrun by millions 
of savages, a return to superstition and blind credu- 
lity might perhaps be possible, and Macaulay's New 
Zealander sitting on the ruins of London bridge 
might become a reality. But modern civilization is 
so essentially different from the civilization of anti- 
quity, that future historians will hardly be called upon 
to indite long chapters on its decline and fall. The 
theological system received a blow by the Reforma- 
tion, the severity of which was hardly felt at first. 
It took decades and centuries to do the work ; and 
even now the revolution commenced by Luther and 
Calvin is still going on ; for revolution here means 
progress, and progress is never final. 

That the Reformation did not satisfy all, that it 
did not accomplish all it should have done, is due 
solely to the incomplete civilization of the age in 
which it commenced. As science progressed, how- 
ever, the emancipation of men from the theological 
system became stronger, and the new sects, as found- 
ed by Luther and Calvin, soon felt the necessity of 
calling upon the temporal power to prevent schis- 
matics from alienating the members of the new faith 
from the church. Very soon these new theological 



180 GREEDS CONSERVATIVE AND STATIONARY. 

organizations persecuted not only the newer sects, 
but each other also ; and, for instance, until recently, 
the Lutheran church in Sweden was as proscriptive 
as the Catholic church was in Spain under Philip II. 
The similarity of proscription in this respect between 
the new and the old churches is no less remarkable 
than natural, and must be attributed to the desire of 
the clergy to preserve the laws and polity of the faith 
intact, and without amendment. This conservative 
policy is indeed a fatal defect in any religious system 
which works under an established code of theologi- 
cal laws. These laws not being susceptible of amend- 
ment or alteration, become fixtures, and eventually 
obsolete, because though well adapted for the par- 
ticular age in which they were made, are often in- 
compatible in after times. We have already seen 
that laws must change from time to time, and theo- 
logical laws must, in order to be effective, be remod- 
eled or renewed. For they were intended to confer 
benefits on those for whose guidance they were de- 
vised; but when that generation has passed away, 
the laws must also change or pass away. 

But a religion or a creed once established, becomes, 
by the force of circumstances, conservative and sta- 
tionary. " Make a hedge around the law," suggested 
the writers in the Talmud, nearly two thousand years 
ago, and, acting on this principle, the theologians 
from that day to this have hedged in their dogmas, 
in order to prevent alterations or innovations. Only 
reluctantly and slowly have the theologians gone for- 
ward, lagging behind while philosophy kept steadily 
in the advance. Even to their own followers their 



PROTESTANTISM CONSERVATIVE. 181 

march was often too snail-like, and the great theo- 
logical rear-guard has seen no inconsiderable bodies 
separate themselves from its corps and hasten on to 
the front. These in turn were denounced as apos- 
tates, heretics, etc., but these secessions have told 
upon the influence of the theological system and 
weakened its power. In fine the church has had to 
make concessions. 

Concessions made to an aggressive enemy are fatal, 
and they are doubly so when they are compelled to 
be made through exhaustion after a violent struggle. 
The ecclesiastical power was compelled to make, in- 
voluntarily, a great concession when it had to ac- 
knowledge the secession effected by the Reformation. 
It only did so, as we shall see hereafter, in conse- 
quence of its exhaustion in one of the bloodiest of 
wars, and from that time, its power was broken. 
Not only was its political influence gradually de- 
stroyed, but it had to modify its standard of ortho- 
doxy itself, in order to keep step with the progress 
of the age. Nor was the Catholic Church alone in 
this position. The creeds of Luther and of Calvin in 
a short time after their institution, became almost as 
conservative as those of the mother-church herself, 
and they both looked with disfavor on all who at- 
tempted to meddle with the principles and discipline 
as laid down and established by their founders. The 
new churches, instead of advancing, acted on the de- 
fensive ; and ere long, great bodies of its members 
seceded from them, because they saw that the theo- 
logical inertness was not suited to the wants of the 
age, to the progress of science. The consequence 



1 82 POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHANGES 

of this was, that what was originally one church, is* 
to-day divided into a multitude of churches, each of 
which claims to be the only true church. They all, 
more or less, attempt to connect the old theological 
system with scientific progress, and in order to do 
so, they have themselves to make more or less prog- 
ress, to concede more and more and to embrace 
more liberal and enlightened views. • But though 
clerical authority may be weakened thereby, the 
morality of mankind has improved wonderfully, be- 
cause men have found a better guide in philosophy. 

Keeping on quietly but steadily in the path of 
duty, the great science has continued to search for 
the truth. She has demonstrated much ; but who 
can tell what still remains to be done. Much 
evidently ; and our progress, great though it has 
been, will appear only small to the coming genera- 
tions. Posterity will hardly be able to realize the 
difficulty we have experienced in discarding the old 
clerical guides who have led us so many years, and 
in taking philosophy as our pilot, in their stead, in 
the journey of life. Hard as the task was, it had to 
be achieved, on account of the political, as well as 
social changes, in the civilized world. 

In the first place, the accumulation of wealth dur- 
ing the past four hundred years has been so rapid, 
as to increase to an extraordinary degree, the num- 
ber of those who could relinquish manual labor ; 
who having the means of subsistence provided for 
them could devote their leisure to literary pursuits. 
Even the Church could not, had they all been willing 
to enter it, have provided room for this great non- 



BROUGHT ABOUT BY PHILOSOPHY. 183 

producing class, and the monopoly of learning-, which 
the clergy formerly enjoyed, was consequently de- 
stroyed. The second cause for this change was the 
division of the Church itself by the Reformation. 
Of this, I have already spoken at length. The third 
great cause was the impetus given to science and 
literature by the invention of printing, by its multi- 
plying to an enormous degree a means of dissemi- 
nating knowledge, not alone among the clergy, but 
among the masses of the people. But the fourth 
cause, which contributed as much, if not more than 
the others, to the change of relations between the 
ecclesiastics and the laity, was the great extension 
of commerce. 

The great voyages at sea which men were com- 
pelled to make, owing to the great discoveries of 
Columbus and Vasco de Gama, developed know- 
ledge of an entirely different character from that of 
the ancients, of which the ecclesiastics were almost 
the sole possessors during the Middle Ages. This 
new knowledge could not be learned from men who, 
during their lifetime were secluded in cloisters, who 
did not mingle with the world, who neither under- 
took voyages by sea nor land, and who consequently 
were ignorant of what in our days almost any school- 
boy knows. Though the ecclesiastic might have 
given a good plan for building a church or a dwell- 
ing, it was not expected that he should give a plan 
for building a ship, designed for crossing the ocean. 
The wonders of the New World, its botany and zo- 
ology, the study of the winds, of astronomy, of geog- 
raphy, all called for new teachers, and these teachers 



1 84 CLERICAL VILLIFICA TION P WEBLESS. 

could no longer be found among the ecclesiastics, 
but had to be looked for in the ranks of the laity. 
Thus it happened that the clergy lost its control 
over the educational interests of the people. But 
here, also, the theological spirit made a determined 
resistance. We have already seen that both astron- 
omy and geology were singled out for attack, because 
their demonstrations were in direct opposition to the 
traditions of the Scriptures. Philosophy, however, 
had to bear the brunt of the battle, and even as late 
as the Eighteenth Century, men like Gibbon and 
Hume were villified by the ecclesiastics on account 
of their opinions. But though having a desire to 
prosecute, the clergy had lost its power. The prin- 
ciples of toleration, of freedom of conscience, though 
not then as ample and liberal as they are to-day, had 
already taken root. 

A few words regarding the growth of religious 
liberty in later times will here not be out of place. 



THE WESTPHAL1AN TREATY. 185 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

Just one hundred and one years after the com- 
mencement of the Reformation, on the shores of the 
Elbe, the great Thirty Years' War begun, which ter- 
minated, as far as treaties can terminate, hostilities 
between the partisans of the Catholic and Protestant 
churches.' For over one hundred and twenty years 
Western Europe had been convulsed by theological 
quarrels. Four generations had passed away since 
the days of Martin Luther, and all Europe, but more 
especially the German Empire, was so exhausted as 
to make peace necessary to all parties. Thousands 
of lives had perished and millions of treasure had 
been expended, ere the theological spirit could be 
brought to make concessions. The victory was dearly 
bought, yet life and treasure had been well expended, 
since it was a victory of freedom. The great West- 
phalian Treaty was the first distinct announcement 
of religious toleration. The international law for the 
first time made it obligatory on the individual States 
to protect their inhabitants in the exercise of their 
religious duties. It was the first treaty of modern 
times, indeed, by which the rights of the people re- 
ceived recognition. The ecclesiastical spirit, more- 
over, had been so weakened — the Church heretofore 
claiming to be independent, had to subordinate itself 



1 86 PEACE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 

to the power of the State, — that it no longer could 
either organize crusades itself, or compel princes to 
persecute Dissenters. The Catholic countries of the 
south of Europe, as well as of America, derived but 
little benefit from this treaty, as the Reformation had 
been early repressed by the temporal authority, but 
this retention of the old faith proved disadvantageous 
to their progress for centuries. 

In the northern parts of Europe and America, 
however, the treaty which terminated the Thirty 
Years' War proved to be almost as great a charter 
of freedom as Magna Charta. Though the political 
power of princes was greatly strengthened and kept 
unimpaired till the days of the French Revolution, 
the Westphalian Treaty undoubtedly laid the foun- 
dation for this great revolution, by granting free- 
dom of conscience, and that this great boon has im- 
proved and developed free political institutions, we 
have ample evidence. 

The modern philosophical schools, indeed, may be 
said to date from the Westphalian Treaty. They 
could hardly have existed during the long years of 
this bloody strife ; for literature, as well as laws, sleep 
in war-time. When peace, however, was re-estab- 
lished, the revival in arts and science began a healthy 
and steady growth. Still it was not without a strug- 
gle, even then, that philosophy was allowed free scope 
when it began to be cultivated and studied by the 
laity. The clergy of the different creeds saw almost 
as great an enemy in this science as they regarded 
the opposing creeds to be, and it was partly in conse- 
quence of the quarrels among the theological schools 



RELIGIOUS PERSECUTIONS. iSy 

themselves, that philosophy for a time preserved an 
existence. We to-day, indeed, have but a faint con- 
ception of the hatred the opposing theologians enter- 
tained for their rivals. Of all the virtues, Christian 
charity was the least they practiced. Luther abomi- 
nated John Calvin, and John Calvin and Beza de- 
tested Luther. The Reformers looked upon the Lu- 
therans as infidels, and the latter upon the former as 
heretics. When the teachers of the new faith had 
the power, they used it as mercilessly as the priests 
of the old church did, and the burning of an unfor- 
tunate Spaniard, Michael Servetus, at the stake, for 
heresy, will remain forever a stigma on the character 
of John Calvin. 

In England the Puritans were persecuted by the 
Anglicans, and in New England these Puritans did 
not scruple to persecute the Quakers and other ma- 
lignants. The persecution of witches is too well 
known to need more than mere mention. The im- 
mortal Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, 
stands gloriously and alone in opposition to this re- 
ligious fanaticism. He is the first ecclesiastic of 
modern times who preached and practiced freedom 
of conscience. The experiment which he initiated 
in his new colony, contrasted so favorably with the 
intolerance prevalent elsewhere, that it did not fail 
to excite admiration, and ultimately, imitation. 

The good work which this great apostle of free- 
dom commenced was continued by succeeding gen- 
erations. It spread not only over the United States, 
but also over Europe. While the clergy of the dif- 
ferent creeds continued to assail each other in their 



1 88 THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. 

pulpits and in print, the philosophical schools which 
arose began to attract more and more public atten- 
tion, and their principles were studied more closely. 
In the meantime ecclesiastical literature began to 
decline in importance, and it is a fact worthy of 
notice, that, notwithstanding the large number of 
theological works published since the end of the 
Thirty Years' War, only one, the Pilgrim s Progress, 
has attained a wide-spread celebrity. Whoever will 
read attentively this remarkable work, cannot fail to 
discover the reasons for its obtaining so great a hold 
upon the public attention. It differs from all theo- 
logical works in this, that it was not written for any 
one sect or church, but for Christianity. It is not 
exclusive or one-sided, but of universal usefulness. 
Catholics, as well as Protestants, can read it with in- 
terest and profit. 

Another noteworthy fact connected with theologi- 
cal literature is the great attention bestowed of 
late years upon the Bible. The investigation into 
the origin of its different parts, and the able and 
thorough criticisms which it has undergone, have 
shown that unauthorized alterations, omissions, and 
additions have been made from time to time in the 
original text. In order to suit the needs of the 
Church, words and sentences have been added or 
omitted, both in the Old and New Testaments, but 
more especially in the latter, and several of the Gos- 
pels have been by Biblical scholars accounted to be 
spurious. Generally the manuscripts of the Tenth 
Century have been adopted for the version of the 
New Testament, but the discovery in recent years 



STRAUSS AND RENAN. 1 89 

of manuscripts as old as the early part of the fourth 
century have created no small interest, not alone 
among theologians, but among Christians generally, 
and more especially among those who labor for a 
return to the principles of the primitive Church. 

I cannot close this chapter without saying a few 
words regarding the remarkable works of Strauss 
and Renan. Both of these works come from men 
who are, or were, professed Christians and even 
theologians — the one a Protestant, the other a Cath- 
olic. Devoting the best portions of their lives to the 
investigation of the origin of the faith and the eluci- 
dation of the biography of its founder, they come 
finally, and we see by their books, reluctantly, to the 
conclusion that Jesus was in the first place, a mortal 
man only, as other men are ; secondly, that much 
which is now incorporated in the Christian religion 
is not what Jesus taught ; and, finally, that the ten- 
dency of the age is toward pure monotheism. Both 
of these writers, and especially Renan, evidently 
wish to save the Church, but they wish to save 
it and preserve it in a reconstructed form. It is 
needless to add that at the hands of the clergy they 
have met with the most severe opposition and the 
strongest denunciations. Their works, however, have 
had a wide-spread publicity, and the ideas enunciated 
in them have to a great degree been supported by the 
philosophical schools. 



igo EVIDENCE OB TESTIMONY. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

The progress of philosophy in acquiring know- 
ledge would be worthless and insufficient were it 
not based upon evidence or testimony ; for the facts 
elicited by this testimony not only extend thereby 
our knowledge, but furnish the requisite proofs. 
This is what in science is termed demonstration, and 
it is a maxim that what has been correctly demon- 
strated we know to be true. This is the maxim on 
which Auguste Comte has founded the school of the 
positive philosophy. But in order to gather this 
evidence and the necessary facts, we need not alone 
to employ our own minds but those of others. Had 
we to rely on our own exclusively, there would be 
hardly any progress, and in order to attain to a high 
degree of civilization, the banding together of men 
in nations is necessary. This has been so eloquently, 
yet briefly stated by an eminent legal writer,* that I 
can do no better than reproduce his views on the 
subject: 

" But, in fact, the knowledge acquired by an in- 
dividual, through his own perception and reflection, 
is but a small part of what he possesses, much of 
what we are content to regard and act upon as 
knowledge having been acquired through the per- 
* Greenleaf on Evidence. Part I., chapter iii., § 7. 



EXTRACT FROM GREENLEAF. 



I 9 I 



ception of others. It is not easy to conceive that the 
Supreme Being, whose wisdom is so conspicuous in 
all his works, constituted man to believe only upon 
his own personal experience, since in that case, the 
world could neither be governed nor improved, and 
society must remain in the state in which it was left 
by the first generation of men. On the contrary, 
during the periods of childhood, we believe implicitly 
almost all that is told us, and thus are furnished with 
information which we could not otherwise obtain, 
but which is necessary at the time for our present 
protection, or as the means of future improvement. 
This disposition to believe, may be termed instinctive. 
At an early period, however, we begin to find that of 
the things told us, some are not true, and thus our 
implicit reliance on the testimony of others is weak- 
ened ; first, in regard to particular things in which 
we have been deceived ; then in regard to persons 
whose falsehoods we have detected ; and, as these 
instances multiply upon us, we gradually become 
more and more distrustful of such statements, and 
learn by experience the necessity of testing them 
by certain rules. Thus, as our ability to obtain 
knowledge by other means increases, our instinctive 
reliance on testimony diminishes, by yielding to a 
more rational belief." 

Nations are not unjustly likened to individuals, 
and the infancy of a nation may not inaptly be com- 
pared to the childhood of man. Our knowledge in 
the infancy of national life was small. We had learn- 
ed, perhaps, a great deal, but there came a time for 
us to unlearn much of what we knew, because the 



i9 2 



INWARD CONSCIOUSNESS. 



knowledge we had gathered was false and spurious 
to a large degree, the facts not warranted nor borne 
out by the testimony adduced. In its place our old 
store of knowledge was increased by knowledge of a 
better sort, when we had increased in ability and 
were able to adopt a more rational belief. The in- 
crease of knowledge by evidence of demonstrations 
of science, has especially given us better ideas, or a 
clearer conception of the Supreme Being than we 
could have hoped to obtain without such aid. 

We have already seen that man possesses an in- 
ward consciousness, and that this consciousness 
teaches us the existence of a superior power. By 
evidence and testimony, by comparing the feelings 
of other men with our own, we see that this con- 
sciousness is not innate in any one man alone, but 
that all men in every age and in all parts of the 
world, did and do, possess it. But this conscious- 
ness at the same time reminds us of our inferiority. 
Even though we are all convinced of the presence of 
a Supreme Being, it is here still that our knowledge 
stops short. When we ask ourselves " What is this 
Supreme Being? What is he like?" can our con- 
sciousness come then to our help and explain the 
great unsolved mystery ? 

We have to content ourselves with only secondary 
evidence to guide us through this mental labyrinth, 
since no man has seen the Supreme Being, has 
spoken to him, or even heard him speak. We, then, 
only know God by his works, but even they are as 
incompetent to answer as we are, and even more so. 
The beasts of the forest and the birds of the air, 



INQUIRY INTO THE NATURE OF GOD, 193 

could they tell us of God, had they a tongue to 
speak? But God's works — whether we take them 
singly, as, for instance, the worm that creepeth on 
the earth, or collectively, as the whole universe — are 
of so imposing a character in greatness, beauty and 
usefulness, that we may well say he who made them 
is all-powerful. We attribute to him the creation of 
the world, but we neither know how it was created, 
nor for what purpose it was created. Here even the 
slender thread of secondary evidence we possess 
breaks off abruptly and our consciousness remains 
the only guide to tell us that this Supreme Being 
whom no one saw create the world, whom no one 
has seen, no one has spoken to, and no one heard 
speak, was and is the creator of the universe. Here 
we have to stop in an investigation of his character, 
not because it can never, or will never be explained, 
but because it cannot be explained by man while man 
is in his present imperfect condition. 

There have been a great many explanations at- 
tempted both by the theological and philosophical 
schools, but hardly any of them of a satisfactory and 
final nature. To most of these I have already allud- 
ed. It is almost certain that as long as the inhabit- 
ants of the earth continue in an isolated state, know- 
ing nothing of the inhabitants of the other stars, 
and therefore unable to draw comparisons, we must 
expect to remain in the dark as to the nature of the 
Supreme Being. Some philosophers, indeed, have 
assumed that Nature is itself God, but we reject this 
supposition because it is only the old idolatry in a 
new form, which justifies the adoration of wood or 
9 



194 



THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 



stone, or anything else as God, simply because these 
things are parts of nature. We assume more rea- 
sonably, we think, that nature is only the creature, 
the great aggregate of the creations of the Supreme 
Being. We assume further that God is independent 
of nature and unchangeable, while we know that na- 
ture changes each hour, each minute, each moment. 

Undoubtedly God's spirit infuses nature in order 
to work these changes, but that God himself was or 
is changing, or even capable of change, would be 
simply a want of perfection, and such an assumption 
would be fatal to the idealistic theory. A change, in 
short, must be either for the better or for the worse ; 
and can we assume that the Supreme Being could 
change either way ? 

Man, however, being a part of nature, is subject to 
these changes, but unlike the rest of his fellow-crea- 
tures that we know, these changes are, in him, of a 
two-fold character — first, those of a physical order ; 
and secondly, those of a mental kind. The former he 
shares with the other creatures known to him, be 
they either animate or inanimate, but the latter 
phases he undergoes alone. They are the effects of 
the working of the soul, of which I have spoken at 
length in the first part of this book. This soul, so 
entirely, so utterly indescribable, man naturally re- 
gards as the highest gift of the Creator, and it has 
not inappropriately been termed the connecting link 
between man and the Supreme Being. We assume 
it to be immortal ; in the first place because we know 
that nothing in the universe perishes, but only changes 
its form ; secondly, because our soul being a spirit 



THE SOUL AS AN EDUCATOR. 



195 



without form, is itself unchangeable, though we at 
the same time assume that it is transferred at times 
from one sphere of action to another. 

In our limited comprehension, we, of course, can 
form no correct conception as to the hereafter of the 
soul, nor can we adduce testimony to prove what 
we assume or fancy is the soul's destiny. We form, 
however, our supposition not alone upon our own 
consciousness, but more particularly so upon that of 
other men. We assume that this soul was given to 
us for a guide through life. According to this theory, 
it is the soul which regulates and educates man, both 
as an individual as well as a member of society. It 
teaches him love and truth, and whenever such 
teachings are followed by us in the best possible 
manner, we experience a feeling of satisfaction, while 
on the contrary we are discontented and ill at ease 
when we know that these teachings are imperfectly 
carried out and neglected. 

The principles of love and truth inculcated in us 
are essential to the welfare of man, not alone for his 
own individual benefit, but also for the welfare of 
society. We are, therefore, careful to conduct our- 
selves toward our fellow-men in a loving and truth- 
ful spirit, and the laws which society has made for its 
government, protection, and endurance, are based 
upon these principles. A violation of either love or 
truth, when it injuriously interferes with other men's 
welfare, is accordingly visited upon the violator 
with due punishment by human laws; always pro- 
vided they are efficiently administered. Many times, 
however, these laws are inadequate for punishing 



I96 SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS THE ARBITER. 

such offences, and in cases of this kind it is a man's 
own consciousness, his feeling of dissatisfaction and 
discontent, which punishes the infraction and viola- 
tion of love and truth. 



THE INNATE MONITOR. 



197 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

I have always thought that a life well spent, ac- 
cording to these principles, is the greatest degree of 
perfection men may attain on earth ; and yet how few 
— I question, indeed, if there be any — who in the last 
moments of their earthly existence can say with sin- 
cerity and candor, as they review their past lives, 
that they have no fault to reproach themselves with, 
that they never in any one instance have deviated 
from the paths of righteousness and virtue. Nothing 
will sooner demonstrate to ourselves our imperfec- 
tions and short-comings than a scrutiny of this char- 
acter. No matter what we may seem to be in the 
eyes of other men, however perfect we may appear 
to be to others, we cannot deceive our own con- 
sciousness ; we cannot veil our motives from its scru- 
tiny, and we must condemn ourselves, even though 
mankind, for want of the proper evidence, may pro- 
nounce us not guilty. Often enough the inward voice 
of warning is heard by man, and happy is the mortal 
who has firmness and resolution sufficient to obey its 
behests. 

But when errors have been committed, when the 
laws of love and truth have been violated by man, 
the question recurs, whether such transgressions can 
be pardoned when they are mitigated by amended 



l 9 S REPENTANCE AND ATONEMENT. 

conduct afterward. The doctrines of repentance and 
atonement are nearly as old as the commission of sin 
itself. When in the heat of the passions men have 
done wrong, they have still been possessed of their 
reason to show them their errors after the passions 
had subsided and they took occasion to reflect. 
When we acknowledge to ourselves, if not to the 
world, that we have done wrong, we express it by 
saying that we are sorry, that we repent, and we at- 
test the sincerity of this repentance, by proposing 
and endeavoring to repair the wrong we have done 
in order to atone for it. 

The feeling of repentance and the desire for atone- 
ment of error are among the sweetest consolations 
left to man, and theological creeds of all kinds have 
always commanded and often enjoined their neces- 
sity. Philosophy, likewise, teaches humanity both 
repentance and atonement, not, however, on the sup- 
position that he who experiences them will receive 
an imaginary or hypothetical reward, but because it 
is right and just ; and because it is necessary to the 
satisfaction of our own consciousness. 

Repentance is of a two-fold character, one of words 
or thoughts and the other of deeds. No man is 
hardly ever so wicked, so utterly lost to all con- 
sciousness, as not to practice at times, either one or 
both of these modes of repentance, and in the schools 
of the theologians this duty has been strictly en- 
joined, and unhappily too often made the instrument 
of satisfying and engendering avarice, of obtaining 
goods under false pretences, and of spreading super- 
stition. It is well enough to do good, to make thereby 



ABSOLUTION AND REPENTANCE. 



199 



a reparation, even though only a partial one, for evil 
committed, but it is not possible that by simply dis- 
possessing ourselves of a portion of our worldly 
goods, or by mortifying our flesh and doing other 
acts of penance, we can be truly repentant, unless 
we at the same time confess, with heart-felt sorrow, 
to ourselves more freely even than to others, that 
our acts have been violations of the great principles 
of morality. 

No creed, no church, no ecclesiastic can absolve 
us from these violations or sins, as they are com- 
monly termed, by our performing certain prescribed 
acts of ecclesiastical penance, and we should mock 
our own consciousness and offer an insult to our own 
understandings, did we believe that such acts or cer- 
emonies can be accepted even by ourselves as a gen- 
uine and heartfelt repentance. If this were so, then 
indeed would Leo X. have been justified in sending 
thousands of Tetzels forth among men to offer them 
absolution for sins for a valuable consideration. It 
was a protest against this monstrous doctrine which 
brought forth the Reformation. Even the church, 
Martin Luther argued, had no such powers, and it 
was because the pope remained firm in this assump- 
tion that the Reformer burned the papal bull and 
dealt the church a blow which rent it in twain and 
divided it for all time to come. 

Repentance, besides being caused hj our con- 
sciousness of violations of love and truth, by our own 
sense of right and the desire of its vindication, is 
often also the effect of the fear of the Supreme Being. 
We assume in such cases that God may be displeased 



200 OF REPENTANCE. 

by our wrong-doing-, that he may punish us for our 
violations of what the ecclesiastics term the laws of 
God. This repentance is the fruit of theological, not 
of philosophical schools. It has been of great value 
to the maintenance of the theological system, and 
has been duly appreciated by all creeds. To this 
probable punishment by God, we owe the inventions 
of hell, of Satan, of purgatory, of heaven itself. Men 
were told that if they did not repent, they would not 
go to heaven ; and they had to repent, not only what 
errors they had committed against society, but 
against the church. Now as each church claimed to 
be the only true one, it followed, that according to 
the ecclesiastics, all men who did not embrace this 
one particular church had not repented, and there- 
fore could not get into heaven. Thus the abode 
hereafter of the blessed, would become a very thinly 
populated region, while Satan's dominion, which 
contained all those who did not repent, would be 
certainly overstocked. But as I have already spoken 
of these matters in the previous chapters, I will only 
remark, that though repentance may and no doubt 
does often lead to good deeds, on account of the fear 
of certain punishment hereafter, it is but the result 
of fear and not of that heartfelt character by which 
men who are repentant ought to be actuated. 



THE FEAJR OF GOD. m 2 OI 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

This fear of God is inferior to the feeling men ex- 
perience when they regard God as the dispenser of 
all the blessings of life. No trait is more marked in 
the human character than the sense of obligation we 
feel inwardly toward the Creator. We know that 
the Supreme Being confers great and inestimable 
blessings upon us, blessings infinitely greater than 
our fellow-men could give us. If we, even for small 
gifts, return thanks to men, is it to be wondered at 
that we should more readily thank the Supreme Be- 
ing for giving us all we have, and that we should not 
alone by words, but also through deeds, wish to show 
our gratitude ? This acknowledgment of indebted- 
ness has brought forth the temples, the churches and 
the pagodas ; it has reared altars and shrines ; it has 
instituted sacrifices and offerings. They are the out- 
ward expressions of our gratitude to the Supreme 
Being, and no matter how superstitious the people 
are who have done all these things, these or similar 
acts, nevertheless, show the innate desire prevalent 
among men all over the earth to reverence the Su- 
preme Power in the manner they deem the most 
proper, the most exalted and the most impressive. 

In the early historic times, as we have already 
seen, these offerings of men to the Deity were un- 

9* 



202 QFFERWG SACRIFICES. 

happily too often of the most revolting and sangui- 
nary kind, but the low state of civilization which 
marked that period, prevented men from showing 
their gratitude in what we consider a more appro- 
priate and more rational manner. We have seen 
that men always offered the Supreme Being as to- 
kens of their gratitude, the best and choicest things 
they possessed. Even the first believers in Mono- 
theism offered to their Creator the choicest animals 
out of their herds ; and why ? Simply because herds 
in those times were accounted to be the highest spe- 
cies of wealth. 

It is no marvel, therefore, to see this mode of offer- 
ing sacrifices change when men changed their con- 
dition from a migratory and nomadic order, to that 
of the fixed habitation. Then other species of wealth 
became superior to mere possession of domestic ani- 
mals. Some possessed money, others houses, and a 
great many became owners of large tracts of land. 
As the theological spirit had increased in a corre- 
sponding manner with the civilization of the nations, 
it was no longer deemed proper to make the custom- 
ary offerings of animals ; and instead of such gifts, 
men gave of that species of wealth which they con- 
sidered to be the highest, as, for instance, gold, silver, 
jewels, lands, etc. Men who had nothing to give, 
but their lives, in their enthusiasm devoted their 
days of existence to what they deemed the service 
of God, and parents who gave their children for this 
purpose, imagined that they had made a more ac- 
ceptable gift to the Supreme Being than all the rest. 

During the palmy days of power of the ecclesiasti- 



GIFTS TO THE CHURCH. 



203 



cal spirit, the number of men and women, who either 
voluntarily or by force, had been incorporated in the 
ranks of the clergy, had become so great, that the 
people did not need the services of all its members. 
This gave rise to the foundation of convents and 
monasteries, where men and women could live in 
solitude apart from the world, and hither not only 
the poor but the rich, flocked in great numbers. 
This portion of the religious world, living in a more 
secluded manner, were deemed at first the most 
worthy of all. It was owing to their subsequently 
concentrating the wealth of the people in their hands, 
and the consequent relaxation of their habits of in- 
dustry which followed, that the monastic orders 
came gradually into discredit. The people who did 
not see the inmates of the convents engaged in labor, 
soon looked upon them as useless members of society, 
and it is principally on grounds of political economy, 
on the making each member of society contribute its 
share of labor, that in latter times some governments 
have not only discouraged the building of new reli- 
gious houses of this kind, but also forcibly dissolved 
the majority of those already in existence. 

The Reformation, while it destroyed in a great 
measure, in Protestant countries at least, the theo- 
logical influence, also greatly abated the desire for 
an ecclesiastical life. Still, in order to show their 
gratitude, men continued to give amply out of their 
possessions, to the Church. They built chapels and 
colleges, endowed livings, and provided liberally for 
the wants of the clergy. This spirit of generosity 
was, of course, encouraged by the ecclesiastics. Men 



204 TEE TEACHINGS OF PHILOSOPHY. 

who had given largely of their means to the Church, 
were held up as examples to other men, and were 
even assured, that by such deeds they had earned 
places and promotion in heaven. These gifts unduly 
enriched the clergy, and greatly impoverished the 
other classes of society. Especially were the clergy 
solicitous to secure to themselves the reversion of 
the estates and goods of men of infirm minds, and 
the aid of the law had too often to be invoked to re- 
instate the natural heirs in the possession of the 
wealth of their relatives. So great, indeed, in some 
countries has the wealth of the Church become, and 
so out of proportion to all its needs, that the State 
has in many instances stepped in and taken away 
part of the Church property. The Disestablishment 
of the Anglican establishment in Ireland, and the 
secularization of the lands of the Catholic Church in 
Italy, are modern instances of this policy. Such 
acts have naturally met with determined opposition 
from the clergy, who were sure to call all these mea- 
sures acts of sacrilegious robbery, and to threaten 
the vengeance of heaven against all who aided and 
participated in them. 

Philosophy has to apprehend no such spoliations, 
because she has no expectation of any such gifts ; 
nor does she desire them. . Having no ministers to 
support, no churches to build, no convents to main- 
tain, she has no need of any wealth. Philosophy, 
however, teaches that it is eminently right and pro- 
per that men should be devout and truly pious, that 
they should reverence the Supreme Being, that they 
should be grateful to the Creator, and that they 



RAPACITY OF THE CLERGY. 205 

should show this gratitude, not alone by words, but 
also through deeds. But philosophy teaches us also 
that there are other and far better, because more 
useful, ways for showing this gratitude, than the cler- 
gy have pointed out to us. Philosophy tells us, for 
instance, that God can be worshipped everywhere, in 
the field and in the forest, as well as in the church 
or in the chapel, at all places and at all times. Phi- 
losophy teaches gratitude to God, that we can at all 
events by our gifts show our gratitude, and as all 
gifts come from God, and he does not consequently 
need them, Philosophy says, that in showing this 
gratitude to God, we should imitate God himself, 
by the universality and not the exclusive spirit of 
our giving. We should endeavor, as we cannot bene- 
fit all mankind, to do the greatest good to at least 
the greatest number. 

A violation of this principle reacts injuriously on 
the donors, whether individually or as a nation. Who 
can doubt, for instance, that an undue liberality to 
the clergy was the main cause of the miserable con- 
dition of Spain during the past two hundred years. 
The very convents which her people built in such 
numbers, not only impoverished the nation, but had 
the tendency to produce gross superstition, which 
was fostered by the clergy as the surest means of 
preserving their possessions and their influence over 
the people. So rapacious became the clergy that 
they were never satisfied, and till they were violently 
despoiled in later times, they owned two-fifths of all 
the lands, which did not bear the burden of taxation, 
but on the contrary, were cultivated in many places 



20 6 THE GBT OF INFIDELITY. 

at the public expense. The great non-producing 
class, which was created by the erection of the num- 
berless convents, and by the exalted position which 
the clergy occupied, imposed more labor and re- 
stricted leisure among the mass of the people, and 
knowledge consequently declined, because there were 
few outside of the clerical ranks who had leisure to 
cultivate the arts and sciences. Mr. Buckle in his 
History of Civilization has given a melancholy, though 
a very graphic sketch of the ignorance and degrada- 
tion of the Spaniards during the last two centuries, and 
assigns clerical rapacity as the cause of the decline of 
a nation which once was the most powerful in Europe. 
It is for its opposition to this unwholesome eccle- 
siastical absorption of wealth, that philosophy has 
been assailed by the clergy, though great care has 
been taken to assign other reasons than the true one. 
The clergy, for instance, accuse philosophy of being 
dangerous to man, because it will not and cannot 
support a great many theological dogmas, and the 
cry of infidelity has at all times been readily raised 
against the great science. This cry has, indeed, been 
the chief weapon, and often a very efficient one in 
the hands of the clergy. Claiming for their own faith 
the distinction of being the only true one, they have 
charged upon philosophy both infidelity and athe- 
ism. Now, we have already seen, that such charges 
may be believed by the ignorant and superstitious, 
but that as men increase in knowledge, they will 
no longer be misled by such falsehoods, but, investi- 
gating for themselves, will in due time learn the 
truth, whose elucidation is the mission of philosophy. 



SOW TO SHOW ONE'8 GRATITUDE TO GOD. 



207 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

Philosophy rejecting the aid of mediators, teaches 
man that he can approach the Creator alone and un- 
guided. It teaches us, as I have explained at length 
in the preceding chapter, that we can and ought to 
show our gratitude to the Supreme Being, but, at 
the same time, it warns us for our own safety not to 
let the marks of our gratitude run in an isolated 
channel, but to do with the means we possess, the 
greatest good to the greatest number. By acting 
thus, philosophy teaches us that we shall ourselves 
be eventually benefited. To illustrate, we need but 
few examples. For instance, had the late Mr. Pea- 
body given his wealth to the clergy to build churches, 
does any one believe that the money expended would 
have done as much good as it will in his building 
healthy and comfortable lodgings for the poor ? Phi- 
losophy teaches us that our gratitude to the Creator 
can best be shown by deeds of philanthropy, since it 
is by acts of this nature that the standard of civiliza- 
tion is raised, the condition of society improved, and 
men begin to appreciate better their own duties and 
their obligations to God and their fellow-men. 

It is for this reason mainly, that philosophy has al- 
ways strenuously exerted its power to advance the 
cause of education, which, while it was a monopoly in 



2o8 THE BIBLE IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

the hands of the Church, was conducted on narrow 
and bigoted principles. Here another violent strug- 
gle took place between the theological and philo- 
sophical schools, to which I have already alluded. 
The clergy everywhere clamored for the retention 
of this monopoly in their hands, claiming that moral- 
ity would be undermined if theological doctrines were 
not made a branch of public education, and taught 
by members of their profession. But so disordered 
and conflicting with each other had the various 
theological systems become when the State undertook 
the control of education, that it was found impossible 
to give theological instruction without preferring the 
creed of one church to those of the others. It was 
found that simply in the use of the Scriptures, there 
was great diversity, because the churches had differ- 
ent versions, and accounted the use of any other 
save the particular one they preferred, as dangerous 
and tending to heresy. This question has of late 
years, especially in the United States, become one 
of great importance, and will in the end result in the 
exclusion of the Scriptures from the public schools. 
A remarkable article on the subject, from the pen of 
a clergyman,* appeared recently in Appletons Journal, 
entitled, " With, or Without the Bible," which ends 
with the following noteworthy passage : 

" On the whole, then, judging from the practical 
working of education without the Bible, it seems to 
be highly satisfactory. Unmixed good is unattain- 
able. Hence we find the alloy of rationalism, and in 
many cases avowed infidelity. It is not quite cer- 
*Rev. Dr. Keatinge, Appleton's Journal, Vol. III., No. 60, p. 578. 



WHAT IS THOUGHT OF ITS USE THERE. 



209 



tain, however, that religious training would avert 
these complexions of mind. They are rather an in- 
evitable re-action against an enforced creed, which 
forbade investigation and silenced opinion. The 
greater the compression, the fiercer the rebound." 

This stifling of investigation is necessarily the re- 
sult of ecclesiastical training. Whoever does not 
believe blindly in the dogmas presented to him, is 
accounted heterodox ; and men in order to be true 
to one particular church, must believe implicitly 
whatever its clergy may teach. A separate opinion 
is not, nor can it be, permitted in any system which 
has certain defined doctrines, at once unalterable and 
fundamental. A church once established, becomes 
conservative, while philosophy must advance with 
the progress of the age. Hence it follows that edu- 
cation under clerical guidance, is forced to partake 
of its conservative and stationary order, while, if 
conducted in a philosophical spirit, it must have an 
onward and progressive tendency. The working of 
the different systems can best be seen by comparing 
the schools of our day with those of the Middle 
Ages when the clergy had the sole control of educa- 
tion. 



210 PRAYER. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

The common method by which men show their 
gratitude to, and veneration for, the Supreme Being - , 
is by public or private worship. The institution of 
prayer is one of the oldest customs of society. It is 
found among all nations and in every age. It is the 
spontaneous expression of the obligation we feel to 
God, and every being who believes in the Supreme 
Power, must, by force of such a belief, give expres- 
sion to it, be it in public or in private. When the 
various orders of priesthood were instituted by the 
different nations, the members of these orders — the 
clergy — were naturally charged with the duties of 
public worship. They not only offered the sacrifices, 
but they led in prayer. At first, no doubt, these 
prayers were offered in the fields, or more generally 
in the forests and sometimes on the tops of the moun- 
tains. Having no habitations and no fixed habits, 
because of their nomadic customs, men offered their 
prayers at irregular times and not always in the same 
places. When, however, nations were formed and a 
large majority of each nation began to devote its 
time to the tilling of the soil, or the pursuit of trade, 
and the mechanical arts, they were forced to erect 
stationary places of abode, and it was but natural 



CEREMONIALS. 2 1 1 

that they should erect also a place of worship — a 
house for their God. 

When society, by the fruits of labor, became pos- 
sessed of a surplus — wealth — men not only furnished 
their own houses better, but they improved the ap- 
pearance of the house which they had built for their 
God. As every man contributed to the adorning of 
God's house, more wealth and labor could be be-' 
stowed upon it than on the private dwellings of the 
people, which it was only the duty of one man to 
provide for, and the splendor with which the house 
of God was furnished had the tendency to make this 
public house more attractive than the private dwel- 
lings. To heighten this impression, the priests not 
only regulated and improved the form of the pray- 
ers, but they multiplied their numbers and varied 
them according to the changes of time or the wants 
of the people. To these they added lessons, or ser- 
mons, to instruct their hearers in the faith. Music, 
also, at an early age, was called in to add to the at- 
traction of public worship. Further, in order to 
heighten the impression, certain ceremonies were 
adopted, and men were commanded to kneel, to 
show their humility, to wash their hands to indicate 
their desire for purification, to dance to show their 
joy, to put ashes on their heads to show their re- 
morse, and to do many other acts unnecessary to 
enumerate. 

Thus arose gradually the structures and ceremo- 
nials of worship as established by the various theolo- 
gical creeds. There can be no doubt that all these 
appliances augment to a certain degree, the rever- 



212 SIMPLICITY OF WORSHIP. 

ence for God, and beautify the mode and manner in 
which we thank him. The cathedrals of Europe and 
America, the mosques and pagodas of Asia, and 
even the temples of old Hellas and Rome were erect- 
ed and furnished magnificently in order to show 
men's gratitude. The multiplicity of ceremonies, 
the burning of frankincense, the grand strains of 
music, the exhibition of fine pictures and statues, all 
charmed the eye and the ear and heightened the 
impressions of the worshippers. But while public 
worship thus gratified the senses in the amplification 
of these imposing ceremonies, they failed in the end 
to satisfy the soul. Men, studying closely the works 
of nature, found more to admire in the contempla- 
tion of her works than even the clergy could tell 
them. They had need of no incentive, no auxiliary 
to admire the Supreme Being, to thank him, or to 
worship him. In the forest and on the prairies, they 
felt that thanks could be rendered to the Deity, as 
well as in the vaulted cathedrals. Well has the great 
poet said that 

" The groves were God's first temples." 

Under their shadows our primitive fathers sent up 
their petitions to the Almighty Father of the Uni- 
verse. There they acknowledged his power and 
confessed their weakness. No hymn, no choir, no 
organ, no incense was needed ; and will any one say 
that their supplications were not as acceptable to the 
Supreme Being as those of their posterity are in 
these latter days ? 

Still, it would be wrong in us to condemn, or to- 



PHILOSOPHY SIMPLIFIES RELIGION. 



213 



tally abolish these ceremonies, and grand manifesta- 
tions of human gratitude. They have been of vast 
benefit to humanity itself. Not alone did they fur- 
ther man's progress in knowledge — in architecture 
and music, for instance, — but they kept him nearer 
to God. They made prayer and worship of the Su- 
preme Being one of the regular and necessary duties 
of society. They set aside stated times when man was 
by the force of habit drawn from the pursuit of 
worldly affairs to ponder on the great source of all 
existence — the Creator. They inculcated love, not 
of God alone, but of their fellow-men. No doubt, in 
many instances, the erection, maintenance, and or- 
namentation of these sanctuaries, was carried to ex- 
cess, as we have already seen in the previous chap- 
ters, but the evil thereby done has been greatly 
overbalanced by the good they have accomplished. 
In our own day, many of the ceremonies practiced 
in former times have necessarily become useless and 
obsolete, because the greatness of the Supreme Being 
is better undestood, but when men were less enlight- 
ened, they needed these ceremonies more than we 
do, in order to become impressed with gratitude to 
God. 

Philosophy, in this respect, has simplified religion. 
It has shown men how near God is to them, how 
he watches and cares for us, that it is both reason- 
able and natural that we should thank the Supreme 
Being, and that this rendering of thanks is indeed 
essential to render us happy and contented. Prayer, 
therefore, is not inaptly termed the balm of life. It 
is the invigorating oil of the soul. It heals wounds 



2i 4 CONCLUSION. 

and renews strength. But, as I have already stated, 
prayer, in order to be effectual, in order to give us 
the needed consolation, should be followed by good 
deeds. Our words of thanks become only empty, 
meaningless phrases, if they are not accompanied by 
actions which show that we acknowledge God's 
goodness by being good and just ourselves to our 
neighbors. Let us wrong our fellow-men, and our 
prayers become forgeries and sacrilege. Then we 
mock the Deity by offering them, and show our folly 
by imagining that mere words can efface, even from 
our own consciousness, the recollection of our evil 
deeds. 

CONCLUSION. 

At all times men have endeavored to produce har- 
mony of religious belief. With but few exceptions — 
the Quakers, for instance, — the work of gaining pro- 
selytes by force, as well as by persuasion, has been 
prosecuted by the adherents of the different theologi- 
cal systems. The pages of history are replete -with 
the records of religious wars ; wars carried on to 
produce this unification of faith, and of all wars, 
there are none which teem with so many chapters of 
horrors and cruelties as have these dreadful strug- 
gles waged ostensibly in the sacred name of religion. 
Not alone have these wars been confined to ancient 
times, as, for instance, the war of Antiochus against 
the Jews, or to uncivilized portions of the globe, but 
we find on the contrary, that the most dreadful 
struggles of this nature have taken place in compar- 



CONCLUSION. 



215 



atively modern ages, and in the most civilized coun- 
tries of Europe. 

Who will not recollect with a shudder the horrors 
of that one single night of St. Bartholomew ; the 
Thirty Years' War in Germany ; the crusades against 
the Albigenses ; the persecution of the Moriscoes in 
Spain ; the long age of Catholic disability in Great 
Britain, and hundreds of similar instances ? It was 
only by these dreadful struggles that the princes and 
the clergy Avere finally forced to concede the boon 
of toleration ; that men could no longer be compelled 
ostensibly to avow their belief in dogmas which se- 
cretly they condemned, and which, in their hearts, 
they held to be wrong, and even sacrilegious. 

The principle of toleration when it became finally 
firmly established, weakened and impaired the 
power and influence of the established State reli- 
gions. With the loss of the power to compel out- 
ward conformity of all classes to such systems, these 
institutions slowly and gradually declined in impor- 
tance, and from time to time important secessions 
from the original church occurred. Hence, with the 
advance of toleration, we find in our days that new 
sects are constantly springing up which contest the 
field with the older churches. These new sects 
necessarily adopt more liberal views than those held 
by the older ones, views more in harmony with the 
progress of the age in scientific knowledge, and are 
untrammeled by the numberless boundaries and 
hedges behind which the older established theologi- 
cal systems have fortified themselves. 

The progress these new theological schools have 



2i6 CONCLUSION. 

made, is one of the most encouraging signs of the 
times, since much of the superstition, and many of 
the old fallacious dogmas, have been boldly disavow- 
ed by them. Man has been brought nearer to the 
Creator. The traditionary mediators, such as saints, 
angels, holy -ghosts, virgins, etc., are beginning to 
be no longer relied upon, for we know that we need 
no other guide than our own conscience to walk in 
the way of the Lord. We know that we have to do to 
others as we wish to be done by, in order to fill worthily 
our place on earth. We know that we have to re- 
gard all mankind as being alike the children of God ; 
as our brethren. We finally know that when we do 
this, and live a virtuous and useful life, we can with- 
out misgiving, without dread, with hope and with 
confidence await the hereafter, wherever and of 
whatsoever kind it may be. To such a doctrine, I 
believe, the spirit of the age is tending. Not rapidly, 
of course, but slowly and surely. Thousands of ages 
may yet have to pass, ere the day of its glory will 
come. But come it will as surely as the seasons 
come in their order. Neither ourselves nor our 
children may live to see this day, but we have the 
consolation of believing that we are hastening its 
coming by our works. 



THE END. 



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• 




ODERN 




OMEN 



AND 



What is Said of Them. 

A Series of Articles from The Saturday Review. Second 
Series. 

CONTENTS. 



The Fashionable Woman. 

Man and his Disenchanter. 

Nymphs. 

Old Girls. 

Feminine Amenities. 

Grim Females. 

Widows. 

Charming Women. 

Apron Strings. 

Bored Husbands. 

Flattery. 

Arguing with Women. 

Women's Weapons. 

The Art of Coaxing. 

The Wild Women. 

Disceuverment. 

Governesses. 

The Shrieking Sisterhood. 

Pretty Women. 

The Birch in the Boudoir. 

Pumpkins. 

The Social Lady Bird. 



Buttercups. 

Beauty and Brains. 

Mesalliances. 

Weak Sisters. 

Semi-Detached Wives. 

Mature Sirens. 

Dolls. 

Dove Cotes. 

Fine Feelings. 

Flirting. 

Chaperons. 

First Love. 

Sweet Seventeen. 

Wasp Waists. 

Friendship. 

Shrews. 

Exclusiveness of Women. 

Popular Women. 

Men's Favorites. 

Womanliness. 

Falling in Love. 

The London Season. 



In One Volume, 12mo, 400 pp., clo. extra. 



